Vision Zero
Updated July 2022
What's Happening Now?
Hey Seattle! It’s time to slow the flock down. We’ve made great strides in reducing speed limits citywide, are continuing to redesign streets to lower vehicle speeds, and now we need your help. In July and throughout the summer, you’ll see billboards, bus ads, yard signs, and more reminding people that slowing down saves lives. Read more about the new campaign on our blog.
This education campaign is made possible thanks to a grant from the Washington Traffic Safety Commission.
What is Vision Zero?
It's Seattle's plan to end traffic deaths and serious injuries on city streets by 2030.
It’s also an international street safety movement, a shift in thinking and in how we approach transportation safety – pushing us toward the most effective ways to reduce harm and move toward a culture of care and dignity for everyone who uses Seattle’s streets. We launched Vision Zero in 2015 and continue to evolve our approach based on best practices and in service of the City’s equally aggressive and important climate action and racial equity goals.
Key Principles
In addition to the goal itself, Vision Zero comes with several grounding principles that guide our work:
- Traffic deaths and injuries are preventable
- Humans make mistakes and are fragile
- Success does not hinge on individual behavior, but on the design of a safe system
Designing a Safe System
While Seattle is one of the safest cities in the country, we still see more than 10,000 crashes a year, resulting in an average of 28 people losing their lives and nearly 180 people seriously injured. These are our friends, neighbors, and family members.
Traffic collisions aren't accidents. We intentionally do not use the word “accident” (instead we say crash or collision) as it tends to imply that nothing could have been done to prevent it. Crashes are preventable and often occur as the result of the way our transportation system has been designed – for the fast, uninterrupted movement of vehicles.
For us to reach Vision Zero, we have to rethink, and in many ways, undo that design. We’re working to encourage slower speeds, reduce conflict points between travelers, and center the safety of the most vulnerable travelers. When we say most vulnerable, we mean people who are not protected by a vehicle – people walking, rolling (using a wheelchair or other mobility device), biking, scooting, or riding a motorcycle.
Learn more about the Safe System approach.
What’s Happening
Safe Streets and Roads for All grant
We submitted a competitive application to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Safe Streets and Roads for All grant program, funded by the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. This new grant program highlights the USDOT’s commitment to advancing what’s called the Safe System approach – a model that emphasizes roadway design and slower vehicle speeds as critical to achieving Vision Zero.
The projects included in our application help advance these safety goals, while also centering equity to serve our most disadvantaged and disinvested communities. Read the full proposal.
Recent Presentations
We provide program updates to a number of boards and committees to share progress on Vision Zero efforts. Take a look at some of our recent presentations below:
- City Council Transportation and Seattle Public Utilities Committee: slides and video (June 2022)
- Seattle Pedestrian Advisory Board (May 2022)
- Transportation Levy Oversight Committee (September 2021)
- City Council Transportation and Utilities Committee: slides and video (June 2021)
Vision Zero in the news: designing a safe system for people.
We wanted to highlight a couple local and national stories that are bringing attention to the ongoing public health crisis that is traffic death and injury, and the solutions we’re aiming to move toward.
- US Department of Transportation announces National Roadway Safety Strategy focused on safe system approach (January 2022)
- KUOW: pedestrian deaths climb despite city’s pledge to eliminate them (January 2022)
Proactive investments
In February 2020, we released phase 2 of our Bike and Pedestrian Safety Analysis to look at bicycle and pedestrian incident trends. This tool helps us proactively make safety enhancements across the city. This groundbreaking approach helps us prioritize locations, anticipate issues, and make decisions informed by data. In 2022, we’ll kick off a 3rd phase of this analysis, with a greater emphasis on equity.