It's time transportation professionals offered something more than thoughts & prayers
World Day of Remembrance is a traffic violence memorial that shouldn't have to exist. Transportation systems are dangerous by design.
The World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims (WDR) is commemorated on the third Sunday of November each year.
It is a high-profile global event to remember the many millions who have been killed and seriously injured on the world’s roads and to acknowledge the suffering of all affected victims, families and communities – millions added each year to countless millions already suffering: a truly tremendous cumulative toll.
Almost immediately after personal automobiles began appearing on city streets, crashes started taking the lives of innocent users of the streets.
Pedestrian fatalities were met with immediate outrage, including public condemnation for senseless acts of street violence.
But instead of protecting victims, the automobile industry and city planners blamed people who used streets without riding in a vehicle. Read Fighting Traffic by Peter Norton for a detailed account of the social engineering campaigns that changed the way street networks were planned and designed.
Some of the most vocal critics of auto-centric planning base their arguments on simple observation and common sense. Prestigious degrees and decades of professional experience are not required to see what is needed to improve transportation systems. In fact, degrees and experience are part of the problem. Modernists raise up generations of more modernists. It takes disruptors with a fresh perspective to point out obvious shortcomings.
Modern transportation planning idolizes the personal automobile and holds its needs above all else, even its user! Modernism has been a social, economic, and public health disaster.
Infrastructure storylines have been effective for 100 years. Sometimes it’s positive phrases like “freedom of the open road” to subtly remind you that speed is your companion. Other times, it’s negative phrases about so-called deficient infrastructure. Journalists are notorious for doing the marketing for motordom by seasoning stories with ideas like this:
Fewer traffic signals mean I cannot turn out of my neighborhood.
Fewer car lanes mean I will be late for work.
Fewer high-speed corridors will prevent me from commuting to an adjacent county.
Streets designed for lower speeds will delay shipments and dampen the economy.
Modern transportation planning has a universal slogan, even if it hasn’t been printed in textbooks: Give people the freedom to race their cars anywhere they please.
People should have the freedom to purchase and operate their own automobile. But that freedom should never encroach on the freedom of people to choose the most basic modes of travel. Consider all the destinations within 3 miles of a typical suburban home that are inaccessible by foot. You don’t have the freedom to walk to the suburban coffee shop. You don’t have the freedom to ride a bicycle to the grocery store. Your kids don't have the freedom to walk or ride bikes to school.
Infrastructure experts have given us the freedom to choose any mode, as long as that mode is a personal automobile.
Take a moment to imagine a future transportation network with zero traffic deaths. I’m serious. Look away from the screen for a few seconds and just consider what would be different if American streets allowed people to move around, and no one died in the process.
No pedestrians killed while simply walking across a street.
No bicyclists killed by motorists turning right at an intersection.
No motorists killed by other motorists soaring through red lights.
Vision Zero is an effort that began in Sweden many years ago to deal with the issue of road safety. Their leaders made a decision to do whatever was necessary to protect human life. Whatever was necessary. Crazy, right?
Sweden reduced its traffic fatalities from 7 per 100,000 people to 3 per 100,000 people a year.
Their transportation system has become the safest in the world, not by gradually adapting design standards, but by fundamentally shifting priorities. Protecting human life is now Sweden’s priority, rather than processing a certain number of rush-hour cars through an intersection.
The American traffic death rate is almost 4 times higher than Sweden. Some other country with a higher value of life than the United States?! How dare we let them out-safety us!
For Vision Zero to be anything more than fantasy in America, we have to move beyond common industry jargon.
Be deliberate with your language. Here are some ways to start:
From accident to crash.
For decades, motor vehicle collisions have been described as accidents, which suggests no fault.
Accident: tree falls into street, and motorist swerves and hits parked car.
Crash: motorist rear-ends another vehicle at a stop light.
This is a subtle but important change in professional jargon. Your brain shrugs at accidents. “What could you do? It was an accident.” The word crash sounds more severe and is more likely to involve a judgment regarding fault. We advocates might not be litigators, but the only way to eliminate traffic crashes is to understand what causes them.
From crash reduction to crash elimination.
Reduction is a worthy goal, but it suggests incremental change. You see this in academic research, traffic safety reports, corridor studies, benefit/cost analysis, and so on. Crash reduction is generally measured in percentage points, and any number of percentage points is considered to be successful. Wouldn’t you rather be on a mission to eliminate traffic deaths?
From driver error to design error.
Campaigns focused on texting, speeding, and seat belts are well-meaning. The intent is to make people aware of their behavior behind the wheel of a car. Of course drivers should be careful when they drive, but the deadliest behavior problems are directly related to street design.
Motorists feel comfortable steering with their knees because the lanes are plenty wide. Motorists are comfortable driving 10 mph above the speed limit because the street was designed 10 mph above the posted speed limit.
From multimodal balance to accommodating all users.
There is no such thing as “multimodal balance.” Transportation networks can’t balance motorized and non-motorized traffic. Pushing a stroller in a crosswalk should never be considered equivalent to operating a minivan. Accommodating free-flow vehicles is vastly different from accommodating free-flow bicycling.
Balance suggests equal weight. Either transportation networks are planned for human beings or they aren’t. Planners and engineers have a responsibility to serve the public interest (i.e. protect human life), even if it means slowing down cars during rush hour.
From blaming victims to punishing offenders.
Professional planners are human and it’s human nature to take sides. In the context of eliminating traffic fatalities, taking sides is your professional obligation. If you’re a professional planner or engineer, you must work to protect life. That’s a pillar of the NSPE and AICP codes of ethics.
Proven ways to make transportation systems safer
FHWA has for decades kept an updated list of proven safety countermeasures. Proven! In their words:
These strategies are designed for all road users and all kinds of roads—from rural to urban, from high-volume freeways to less traveled two-lane State and county roads, from signalized crossings to horizontal curves, and everything in between. Each countermeasure addresses at least one safety focus area – speed management, intersections, roadway departures, or pedestrians/bicyclists – while others are crosscutting strategies that address multiple safety focus areas.
The uplifting (and maddening) point of the FHWA website is that many traffic deaths are preventable through design. It’s encouraging to know there are ways to design systems to save lives, and it’s infuriating that mobility professionals aren’t implementing proven life-saving strategies.
Street design is fixable. Human life is savable.