Last year 219 people were seriously injured on Seattle streets, the majority of whom were driving or passengers, and around a third were pedestrians…As for deaths, 27 people died in traffic collisions last year, and the majority (18) were people walking.
People on Seattle streets interact with Vision Zero projects everyday: dozens of “No Turn on Red” signs, increased intersection visibility, and speed humps.
Advocates testified before [Seattle city] council members that they already know where the problem is…“And the ingredient that’s been missing has not been a lack of ideas or commitment from Seattle Department of Transportation, it’s been a lack of political will.”
I’m willing to bet that it’s lack of enforcement. It really seems like in the last 10-15 years or so, enforcement of driving laws in US and Canada has just… stopped. And, ultimately, making all sorts of new rules and regulations to stop fatalities/injuries means nothing if they are not enforced.
I’d imagine each of us here in North America can think of at least a couple urban centres that have become lawless free-for-alls on the roads.
“We’re still talking about the same streets,” said the Seattle Streets Alliance Executive Director Gordon Padelford. Namely Rainier Avenue, Aurora Avenue, Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Lake City Way, and Fourth Ave South, which are areas already flagged by the Seattle Department of Transportation as hot spots for injuries.
“And the ingredient that’s been missing has not been a lack of ideas or commitment from SDOT, it’s been a lack of political will.”
Specifically, he said, making tough changes to streets that might inconvenience drivers, but ultimately increase safety.
Seattle Department of Transportation and the advocacy groups are saying the same - that there needs to be street revisions to better protect pedestrians, but there’s a lack of political will.
Hopefully with the new mayor Wilson comes some changes on this front. It’s been a few months and maybe this’ll be brought to her attention sooner than later.
Enforcement does help but it’s not as simple as asking police to enforce traffic laws, mostly because police incentives are not aligned with fair traffic enforcement. Traffic stops are well documented to be racially unfair, often used as pretext for searching trying to finding another crime, and limited in how effective they can be. This topic is covered in some popular urbanism books, like Confessions of a Recovering Engineer, and frequent reports and papers documenting these behaviors, like Traffic stop policy in Ramsey County, MN or Distracted partners: Why police traffic enforcement is inefficient.
These issues are why many vision zero policies push strongly for traffic engineering solutions over enforcement. Speed cameras, traffic circles, lane narrowing, etc work 24/7 without high operational expenditures and they’re less likely to selectively harm minorities.
