6 Trial Lawyer • Fall 2022 By Scott Kocher OTLA Guardian Motivated by my work representing injured pedestrians and bicyclists, I began to search out ways to make our communities safer for people using more vulnerable modes of transportation. I learned those of us concerned about traffice safety in Portland are not alone. There is a great deal of work being done around Oregon, around the country and around the world. The model for preventing these collisions before they occur is now widely known as Vision Zero. Several key principles define this vision for safety. Prevention Vision Zero focuses on changing the systems that produce fatal and serious crashes in order to eliminate them. This from the traditional “three E’s” of transportation safety — education, engineering and enforcement. Vision Zero creates safe systems by limiting the places on streets and highways where non-survivable impact forces exist through speed reductions, and protecting people where unsurvivable forces must remain by separation. It expects humans to make human errors, rather than punishing errors with death. Vision Zero streets in urban areas are constructed so that they aren’t conducive to travel faster than 20 MPH, because impacts with people outside vehicles above that speed are likely to be fatal. Reducing speed means speed bumps and chicanes (devices used to slow traffic) on small streets, and timed traffic signals and radar cameras on big streets. Vision Zero streets have lanes that are just wide enough, but no wider because people drive faster in wider lanes. When a street is operated at potentially deadly speeds, Vision Zero means transportation agencies provide people walking, rolling or on bicycles with sidewalks and lanes separated from vehicles. Rural routes are either operated at low enough speeds that a head-on crash would be survivable, or agencies provide a median divider. In a remarkable video, the Nevada Department of Transportation asked people on the street three questions that introduce Vision Zero: How many traffic fatalities do we have Scott Kocher each year in this country? Answers range from 100 to “millions.” The correct answer for 2021 is 42,915. Trying to reduce fatalities, what is a good goal for our state? Several people suggested cutting fatalities by half. What is a good goal for your family? Everyone says, of course, zero. A core principle of Vision Zero is that no loss of life on our streets and roads is acceptable. Zero is possible European countries that had fatality rates similar to the U.S. in the past have achieved dramatic improvements by actually implementing changes to their streets and highways. Sweden has reduced its fatalities by more than half since 2006, and Norway by over 60%. Portland and Oslo have similar populations. In 2019, people in Portland suffered 49 traffic fatalities, of which 18 were people walking or rolling. By contrast in that year, Oslo had one single traffic fatality, when a man drove his car into a pole. The contrast far exceeds anything that can be explained away by cultural or other supposed differences between countries. Oslo achieving “zero” for bicycles and pedestrians is no accident. It is the result of across-the-board changes that remove deadly speeds or provide separated space for people walking, rolling and riding. You can see the difference if you visit Oslo on Google Earth. Oslo, V I S I O N W h a T Y O U S H O U L D K N O W ZERO
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