How many traffic deaths or life-altering injuries do you accept for yourself and your loved ones? Zero, you say?
Traffic crashes are frequent, predictable and systemic. They’re not accidents. They’re not inevitable. But this also means they’re preventable.
Instead of focusing on fallible law enforcement, we should prevent serious crashes in the first place.
Focusing on the errors of imperfect road users individualizes what is a systemic problem. Those who design our transportation system bears the biggest responsibility for safety.
A better solution: design our streets for safety above vehicular throughput.
Design is not paint. It’s not signs. It’s not nominal speed limits.
Design to slow down drivers. At slower speeds drivers are less likely to crash. If they crash, it’s less severe.
Humans are vulnerable. Design to prevent drivers hitting people outside of cars.
This doesn’t mean that road users don’t have to be careful. It does mean the price of errors don’t have to be death or a permanent disability.
Our roads are a human engineered system. How many deaths should it be engineered for?
Vision Zero Vancouver 