VISION ZERO: A plan to reduce traffic deaths, injuries

By HUB SmartCoverage Team on January 2nd, 2024

The shorter days of fall and winter mean both drivers and pedestrians must be more careful.

As the weather changes and daylight hours decrease, pedestrians become more vulnerable. Nearly half of all crashes involving pedestrians happen between October and January. Even when drivers proceed with caution, it's hard to see pedestrians when visibility is poor.

Each year at least 1,900 people die on Canada’s roads, and 153,000 are injured (9,500 of them seriously). But there’s a movement gaining steam that aims to prevent these tragedies.

Vision Zero is a strategy to eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe injuries, while increasing safe, healthy, equitable mobility for all. First implemented in Sweden in the 1990s, it gained widespread attention by cutting its traffic deaths in half in just two decades. This achievement can be attributed to the commitment to failsafe systems of road and vehicle design and speed control.

The strategy has proved successful in Europe and is now spreading across North America. In fact, two Canadian provinces, 21 cities – including Windsor and Toronto – as well as two regions have adopted it. To see if where you live is on the list click here.

Integrates human failing

Vision Zero Canada recognizes serious injury or deaths are predictable and preventable, and campaigns for the elimination of harm including drivers, passengers, pedestrians and cyclists. It integrates human failing into its approach and is a fundamentally different way at looking at traffic safety that incorporates the following strategies:

Building and sustaining leadership, collaboration, and accountability – including transportation professionals, policymakers, public health officials, police, and community members.
Collecting, analyzing, and using data to understand trends and potential disproportionate impacts of traffic deaths on certain populations.
Prioritizing equity and community engagement.
Managing speed to safe levels; and
Setting a timeline to achieve zero traffic deaths and serious injuries, which brings urgency and accountability, and ensures transparency on progress and challenges.

Be safety aware

Vision Zero Vancouver reminds pedestrians there are some common street designs where drivers are likely to hit them. They are:

Wide roads – Comfortable for drivers to speed, regardless of the posted limit. There’s longer exposure to car traffic for people crossing. Safer: Narrow roads with median islands.
Large radius corner – Drivers can turn faster, unlikelier to stop for people crossing. Cross walks become longer. Safer: Sharper corners.
Right on red allowed – Drivers mostly attend to car traffic on the left, waiting for a gap before launching, and are less aware of people trying to cross. Drivers stop on crosswalks to prepare for right on red, forcing people to cross closer to moving cars. Safer: Ban right on red and let people cross.
Shallow left turns – Drivers pay more attention to oncoming traffic. Cutting across diagonally enables faster runs. Both worsen with multiple car lanes. Safer: Roundabouts.
Parking near corners – Cars parked near intersections obscure an approaching driver’s view of people crossing and vice versa. Safer: Curb bulges and daylighted intersections (converting the parking spaces immediately before a crosswalk into red zones a minimum of 10 feet long).

Achieving Vision Zero - no matter where you live - is about developing failsafe systems. You can be a part of it. Urge your municipality to design streets for safety.