Q. I have heard more than once that being a pedestrian in the city today is a lot safer than in the era of the Model T. Is that hype or truth?A. It's true. Although horrible automobile accidents involving pedestrians still make the headlines, and although advocacy groups like Transportation Alternatives complain that more should be done, statistics show that it is much safer to walk along New York streets today than at any time since the dawn of the automobile age.According to New York City health statistics, there were 232 pedestrian deaths in 1910, when records were first kept. They soared to the 700s in the 1920s and peaked in 1929, when 952 were killed on foot.Deaths dropped during the Depression and World War II, and fell further to the 400s in the '40s and '50s. They have generally been dropping since. There were 304 pedestrians killed in 1991 and 291 in 1992, and there have been fewer than 200 a year since 2000, according to the police, the State Department of Motor Vehicles and the City Department of Transportation. The pedestrian death toll for 2004 and 2005 was 156 each year, and the total last year was 166.No one factor explains the trend. The heavy death toll in the '20s was probably caused by the relative novelty of automobile traffic and the congestion on city streets, factors that would also help explain the reduction during the Depression and war years, when fewer people drove.Other reasons for the drop include public educational campaigns (remember "Cross at the green, not in between"?), police crackdowns on drunken driving and license suspensions, clearer traffic signals, the introduction of yellow traffic lights and separate pedestrian lights.