No more traffic fatalities is now the official policy of the city of Pensacola.
The Pensacola City Council unanimously adopted a “Vision Zero” policy that aims to eliminate all traffic deaths and severe injuries by 2035.
The Vision Zero program has been adopted by cities throughout the United States after having success in European countries in reducing traffic fatalities.
Vision Zero has planners take the approach that every traffic fatality is a preventable death, and that road design can play a role in preventing those deaths.
Pensacola Councilman Casey Jones sponsored the resolution. Jones told the News Journal that the city committed to creating a Vision Zero policy in its 2023 Active Transportation Plan, and he was following through on that commitment.
City planners reported in the Active Transportation Plan that between 2018 and 2022, there were 12,141 car crashes in Pensacola, with 115 severe injuries and 28 deaths. Of those, 31% of the severe injuries and 35% of the deaths were pedestrians or bicyclists.
“It’s a lofty goal to have zero injuries, zero deaths, but I think it’s an important goal,” Jones said. “Just like any hospital that you go to, their goal is always going to be zero preventable deaths, zero preventable harm to their patients. And I think similarly, we have to set our goal zero.”
Jones said that since the plan was adopted, engineers and traffic planners have to factor in the Vision Zero program into their designs anytime the city does a road project.
“Going forward, anytime we are looking at redesigning a road or building a new road, we take into account people that are commuting with bicycles, or people that are walking and make sure that they have safe ways to do that,” Jones said.
Jones said having zero deaths and injuries is an aggressive but achievable goal.
“There are a lot of people in Pensacola who are biking to get to work or biking to get to school or walking to do the same thing,” Jones said. “And the way the roads have been designed for years and years now has been based on just moving cars and moving them efficiently. And I think while making sure we keep traffic moving efficiently, we also need to make sure we’re keeping people safe all over the city.”
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Pensacola adopts policy to have zero traffic deaths by 2035
Reporting by Jim Little, Pensacola News Journal / Pensacola News Journal
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