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.”
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.