According to the World Health Organization, road traffic injuries is
the 7th leading killer of people all over the world and is projected to
increase to the 5th leading killer by 2030. 1.2 million people are
killed every year in road or traffic accidents -- that’s almost the
entire population of New Hampshire killed in traffic accidents annually.
This has caused some concerns for politicians, activists, engineers,
and planners in Sweden and in 1997 their parliament approved a new
initiative called Vision Zero.
Vision Zero is an initiative
with an end goal of zero people being killed in traffic accidents. This
may be in car to car accidents, car to pedestrian accidents, or car to
bicycle accidents. In any case, zero people killed by accidents on
Swedish roads. This initiative uses a multi-pronged approach to achieve
it’s goal. First, it builds support with politicians, corporations, and
the general public to being looking at and demanding safer environments
for those using public roads. Secondly, it looks a vehicle design to
determine how cars can be designed better to withstand side and front
impacts as well as impacts with pedestrians and bicyclists. Third, it
recognizes that humans are not perfect and encourages engineers and
planners to create roadway systems that anticipate accidents and develop
roadway design solutions to minimize or eliminate the most deadly types
of accidents.
Traditionally, when design or redesign a
roadway system we focus on accidents, assume perfect human behavior, we
fault one person (the driver) for accidents, and we think that saving
lives can be too expensive. Vision Zero turns all of this upside down
and encourages us to focus on fatalities, assume humans are not perfect
and design for their imperfection, places fault for road deaths on
drivers, auto manufacturers, and roadway designers, and postulates that
saving lives should be cheap.
The data has proven the results
of this initiate to be drastic and it has been adopted all over Europe.
The United States is also being to look at this initiative with cities
like New York, San Francisco, Boston, Portland, and Seattle all
implementing this initiative.
While we don’t have high
occurrences of pedestrian or bicycle deaths here in Elizabethton,
everyone must play their part and be mindful of road safety for ALL
users of the roadway -- drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians. The
multi-modal grant we just received is an effort to be proactive to
prevent accidents or even deaths as we work to become a more pedestrian
friendly community. It may not always be convenient to drivers, but
having multiple types of transportation provides many benefits to our
community and our citizens. Let’s talk about it!
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