An Introduction to Vision Zero and SLC’s Proclamation
On January 11, 2023 Salt Lake City’s Mayor, Erin Mendenhall, announced that the city would “join the Vision Zero Network, a national strategy to eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe injuries on City streets, while increasing safe, healthy, equitable mobility for all.” Before we explore what the city has done in the past 21 months to realize Mayor Mendenhall’s proclamation, we feel it is necessary to understand more about Vision Zero. In this article we will ask the following questions:
What is Vision Zero?
How does Vision Zero differ from what the city is doing right now?
What is the promise of Vision Zero?
And, why is Sweet Streets intensely interested to see our city follow through with its Vision Zero promise?
What is Vision Zero?
Vision Zero is not a policy, budget item, an infrastructure bill, or a PR campaign. “It is a strategic plan that aims to eliminate all traffic fatalities and serious injuries, while increasing safe, healthy, and equitable mobility for all.” Its success requires the complete overhaul of how everyone frames roadway safety; from the current prevalent perspective of personal responsibility to the perspective of shared responsibility.
How does Vision Zero differ from what the city is doing right now?
The Utah Strategic Highway Safety Plan currently guides all strategic transportation safety plans in our state, including Salt Lake City’s. This is what we call the “traditional approach”, where the fundamental assumption is that human error is the root cause for most (if not all) serious or fatal crashes. The traditional approach is also known as the 5 E’s:
Source: Vision Zero Network
Engineering
Education
Enforcement
Emergency Medical Response
Everyone.
The problem that arises from the assumption of personal responsibility, is that transportation professionals can avoid accountability by concluding that human error is the cause of most severe and deadly crashes. By doing this, the ability of the system to analyze, determine, and share the responsibility for the safety of all users is never resolved; the system fails to learn. As a consequence of this limited perspective, the traditional approach drives transportation stakeholders into heavy reliance on some belief that people will eventually stop making mistakes – major spending is done on educational campaigns aimed to educate people into being perfect drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians at all times; in short order, to turn humans into automatons.
What’s the promise of Vision Zero?
Source: Vision Zero Network
Vision Zero’s ultimate goal is to shift our perspective from blame to accountability. To do so, Vision Zero demands from transportation professionals that they view people not as robots but humans who will continue to make mistakes (willingly or unwillingly) regardless of how much we ask them to be perfect. In fact, it should not be the job of the transportation system to pass judgment on individual behavior; that is a task best suited for the judicial system.
If, and when, stakeholders clear this mental hurdle, a myriad of possibilities begins to dawn. First, they will realize that they are free from chasing ghosts in the form of trends in historical crash data and instead begin to seek for potential for serious and fatal crashes in a systematic and proactive approach - they begin to fully apply the Safe System Approach.
What emerges from this holistic process is what Vision Zero calls “a fundamentally different way to approach traffic safety” and this approach has seen drastic improvements in places around the world.
Why is Sweet Streets intensely interested to see Salt Lake City follow through with its Vision Zero promise?
Sweet Streets is committed to the principle of people-first planning, budgeting, implementation and operation of our streets and public spaces. So, while we are jubilant about the many safety improvements that Salt Lake City continues to institute, we know that it won’t be enough to deliver the promise of ZERO unless the necessary paradigm shift takes root throughout the community. Further, as the capital city of our state, Sweet Streets is hopeful that any meaningful reduction in car violence accomplished by Vision Zero in Salt Lake City will encourage other communities and transportation departments around the state to follow their example. That is a vision Sweet Streets is willing to make a reality.
