By Mary Velan
Gov1
What Happened?
Campaigns in both the UK and the United States have focused on improving pedestrian safety by making drivers more cautious.
UK Grassroots Campaign
Across the UK, a large number of communities have implemented a 20-mile-per-hour speed limit thanks to a successful grassroots campaign. The 20 mph zones are spread across both rural and urban communities, impacting more than 15 million of the 64 million UK residents. In London alone, three million residents live in 20 mph zones.
So how did this happen?
The 20’s Plenty for Us nonprofit organization was formed in 2007 and aimed to create more livable street environments in communities across the country. The goal of the nonprofit was to have a mandatory 20 mph speed limit set on most roads. Since its formation, the nonprofit has spurred the creation of 263 local campaigns in the UK, which have directly impacted new traffic speed mandates.
The nonprofit provides each campaign with the necessary information and materials to educate lawmakers and community stakeholders on the benefits of lower speed limits. Each community campaign is allowed to leverage whatever grassroots tactics they prefer to create awareness and bring about change. The campaigns have been widely successful due to their grassroots nature, in that local residents are the ones leading the discussion on how to make the community safer, CityLab reported.
In more urban communities such as parts of London, the campaigns have expanded to include additional pedestrian safety features such as wider sidewalks and protected crossings.
SF Vision Zero
The Vision Zero program first launched in Europe and has since spread to many cities in the United States. The goal is to improve the safety of roadways so as to achieve zero deaths annually. San Francisco’s Vision Zero plan called for a reduction of deaths and serious injuries by 50 percent by 2021. One major component of the campaign involved extensive data analytics to better understand conditions surrounding pedestrian injuries and fatalities and create public policy solutions to prevent them more effectively, CityLab reported.
The San Francisco Department of Public Health and Municipal Transportation Agency released a study on the data-driven policy analysis being implemented. The research studied different changes that had been made in the community to determine if they were successful in getting drivers to yield to pedestrians at intersections. Because the study found 64 percent of all collisions between people walking and driving are the driver’s fault, it was important to focus on altering the behavior of drivers as well as pedestrians, CityLab reported.
One tactic the city used to encourage drivers to yield was placing bus ads and billboards in the streets leading up to the most dangerous intersections. The ads would remind drivers that pedestrians have the right of way. The city also increased enforcement of the law requiring drivers to yield, while community groups organized grassroots outreach to increase awareness of the laws.
The researchers found a 3 to 4 percent increase in drivers yielding to pedestrians at intersections that received some sort of intervention such as billboard ads or grassroots campaigns compared to intersections where no tactics had been deployed. The city believes expanding the public awareness campaigns and strategies throughout the city will spur a larger percentage of drivers to start yielding at intersections, CityLab reported.