Sept. 14, 2021By Jason Plautz, Smart Cities Dive It is possible to achieve zero traffic fatalities if we “fundamentally rethink” the nation’s approach to transportation planning, even as traffic deaths continue to climb, said U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Chair Jennifer Homendy at the Governors Highway Safety Association’s (GHSA) annual conference in Denver on Monday. An estimated 8,730 people died in motor vehicle crashes in …
Success of Drunk Driving Laws is Limited … If Drivers Have No Alternatives
Study: Success of Drunk Driving Laws is Limited … If Drivers Have No Alternatives (Streetsblog USA) By Kea Wilson, Aug 16, 2021 Lowering the threshold for how much a driver can drink before he gets behind the wheel may not actually make our streets safer — at least if communities don’t provide drinkers other ways to get around besides driving, a …
There is no mandatory federal crash-reporting standard and the standard that NHTSA recommends is deeply flawed and much is left up to officer discretion. We can fix this!
A recent study conducted by advocates in Portland, Ore., for instance, compiled law-enforcement data alongside hospital records, media reports, roadway measurements, and even manual inspection of adjacent land uses on Google Maps. Similar efforts are underway in San Francisco. Some advocates say the MMUCC should include many of those factors its next edition (2022) — and the burden of collecting the data should …
The Car Crashes That Go Undetected
Safety advocates say that 30% of traffic collisions involving bikes or pedestrians in Washington, D.C., aren’t reported by police. Here’s how they’re trying to close that data gap. By Laura Bliss, CityLab, Bloomberg, July 15, 2021 Laura Bliss is a writer and editor for CityLab in San Francisco, focused on transportation and technology. She also writes MapLab, a biweekly newsletter about maps.@mslaurabliss A hallmark of …
Driver killings of those walking have doubled. Police are failing to report 30-40 percent of 911 calls about drivers striking pedestrians, bicyclists, and other road users, with crashes going unreported most often in Black and brown neighborhoods
In 2004, pedestrians were only 10% of all traffic-related deaths; in 2019, they were 20%. The idea that “distracted walkers” are a major cause of crashes is a myth. State and federal attention focuses almost entirely on protecting people inside vehicles. This is because federal and state DOTs have traditionally focused on highways July 21, 2021 – Last week, Citylab broke an explosive Washington, D.C., study that showed …
Car culture disproportionately kills Black Americans. The number of Black people who died in traffic collisions rose by nearly a quarter last year
Adam Mahoney, Environmental Justice Fellow, Grist, Jul 07, 2021, Climate + Transportation Huey Randle Jr. lived down the street from my grandmother for 47 years. The 66-year-old Black Vietnam War veteran was a staple in his community, regularly seen out and about on daily walks. For his daughter Chiquita, he was a rock, always willing to help her when needed, …
Is Free Public Transit an Idea Whose Time Has Come?
By SANDY SMITH, Next City, MAY 19, 2021 New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) is one of several large public-transit agencies contemplating a fare-free future. (Photo by Adjoajo/CC BY-SA 4.0) The debate over transportation equity has heated up, given the sharp change in transit-rider demographics once the COVID-19 pandemic took most whiter and wealthier riders off of buses and (especially) …
How To Design Life-Saving, Low-Speed Zones
By Nikita Luke and Siba El-Samra, May 24, 2021 This piece originally appeared on City Fix. https://usa.streetsblog.org/2021/05/24/how-to-design-life-saving-low-speed-zones/ As the COVID-19 pandemic has altered urban landscapes and pushed many people toward active mobility, there’s increased urgency to make roads safer for walking and cycling. Many cities are now tasked with protecting more vulnerable users in addition to creating safe public spaces that will enable economic …
Safety, less parking, cost-benefit of transport investments
Since 1956 we’ve spent $10 trillion on highways in the United States. For that astronomical sum we have 2.9 million deaths; streets, roads, and bridges that are commonly described as “crumbling;” epic and ever-growing highway congestion; and the single largest sectoral contributor of climate pollution. Now we have ample evidence that this approach is both ineffective and costly. We also …
Safety stop for bikes
making the Safety Stop legal statewide. We enjoyed the conversation and are always excited to have such engaging dialogue about our policy initiatives. As promised, we wanted to follow up with you all with some resources and recordings. Here is the recording from last night’s conversation. Please forgive me: I forgot to hit record until we were a couple minutes into …