Title
Recommend City Council Adoption of Vision Zero Policy
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Background
On September 3, 2019, the City Council adopted a Council referral that included a call for a Vision Zero policy declaring that safety is the priority in designing and managing the City's roadways.
Vision Zero is an international movement that provides a framework for reducing traffic deaths and life-changing injuries to zero, while increasing safe, healthy, equitable mobility for all. A core principal is that traffic deaths and severe injuries are unacceptable and preventable. Vision Zero is a multi-disciplinary approach that includes education, enforcement, and engineering measures; and focuses on safety for all road users, including drivers and their passengers.
Each year approximately 40,000 people are killed in traffic collisions in the United States, according to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. This gives the United States the highest traffic death rate per person compared to 19 peer nations, as found by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
In Alameda between 2011 and 2018, 15 people died and 82 suffered severe, life-changing injuries on City streets, an average of two deaths and 10 severe injuries per year. Among the 97 people who died or experienced severe injuries, 33% were walking, 29% were riding bicycles, 21% were in motor vehicles, and 18% were riding motorcycles. Of those killed, more than half were walking when the crashes occurred. In addition, more than 1,750 people reported pain or endured mild-to-moderate injuries from traffic collisions of all modes during this time period, plus there are an unknown number of unreported collisions and near-misses. For detailed data, see the table below.
Vision Zero recognizes that while human error will always occur, designing safer streets can reduce collisions and can prevent collisions from causing death or severe injuries. For instance, measures that reduce motor vehicle speeds ca...
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