Eliminating traffic deaths

Are we there yet? Read the rest of the package. Every year, traffic crashes kill more than one million people, and they’re the leading cause of death for children and young adults. In the US, 100 people a day lose their lives this way, in many cases not on highways but on rural and local streets. “Traffic deaths are a leading cause of preventable death, yet we treat it like it’s inevitable,” says Leah Shahum, founder and director of the Vision Zero Network, a nonprofit focused on making streets less deadly.

我们快到了吗？阅读本专题的其余部分。每年，交通事故夺走超过一百万人的生命，它们是儿童和年轻人死亡的主要原因。在美国，每天有 100 人因此丧生，其中许多情况并非发生在高速公路上，而是在乡村和当地街道上。“交通事故是导致可预防死亡的主要原因，但我们却将其视为不可避免，”致力于让街道减少致命性的非营利组织“零愿景网络”（Vision Zero Network）的创始人兼主任莉亚·沙胡姆（Leah Shahum）说。

The sticking points. The causes of a crash can be muddy. Drivers make mistakes like speeding or getting distracted, but infrastructure fails them too: Perhaps they were on a road built for speed and not safety, in a screen-filled vehicle, or at an intersection where pedestrians, cyclists, and other cars aren’t visible. Cheap and proven traffic-calming opportunities abound—from using planters to tighten intersections to lowering speed limits—but government logjams and red tape can be speed bumps. “There’s so many moving parts,” says Laura Sandt of the University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center. “On the flip side, it shows that we have so many opportunities for injury prevention.”

症结所在。事故的原因可能很复杂。驾驶员会犯超速或分心等错误，但基础设施也让他们失望：也许他们行驶在一条为速度而非安全而建的道路上，身处一辆充满屏幕的车辆中，或者处于一个行人、骑自行车者和其他车辆不可见的十字路口。廉价且经过验证的交通宁静化机会比比皆是——从使用花坛收窄路口到降低限速——但政府的僵局和官僚作风可能成为减速带。“涉及的变数太多了，”北卡罗来纳大学公路安全研究中心的劳拉·桑特（Laura Sandt）说。“另一方面，这也表明我们在预防伤害方面有很多机会。”

The progress. The total number of traffic deaths has increased over the last century. And though the US rate has dipped from a peak of 30.8 deaths per 100,000 people in the 1930s, the past decade has seen a concerning jump in deadly pedestrian incidents. At the same time, communities are waking up to the essential role of traffic safety policy, Shahum says. One success story is Hoboken, New Jersey, which hasn’t had a traffic fatality since 2017. This is due to a combination of efforts like boosting investment in public transit, promoting walkability by extending curbs, and using cameras to identify crash-prone intersections in need of a redesign.

进展。上个世纪，交通事故死亡总数有所增加。尽管美国的死亡率已从 20 世纪 30 年代每 10 万人中 30.8 人的峰值下降，但过去十年中，致命的行人事故却出现了令人担忧的激增。沙胡姆表示，与此同时，社区也开始意识到交通安全政策的重要作用。一个成功的案例是新泽西州的霍博肯市，自 2017 年以来，该市没有发生过一起交通死亡事故。这归功于多种努力的结合，例如增加公共交通投资、通过延长路缘石来促进步行便利性，以及利用摄像头识别需要重新设计的易发生事故的路口。

But even there, obstacles remain. If an intersection hasn’t been proved to be deadly, for example, it can be an uphill battle to argue for removing parking spaces to widen curbs. “You’re kind of selling insurance through these improvements, and that’s not always easy,” says Greg Francese, the city’s acting director of transportation and parking. There’s also no silver bullet that will work everywhere. Situated directly across the river from New York City, Hoboken is a highly transit-oriented city of less than 60,000 people. Success there might not translate to traffic-death hot spots like Memphis or Dallas.

但即使在那里，障碍依然存在。例如，如果一个路口尚未被证明是致命的，那么主张拆除停车位以拓宽路缘石可能会是一场艰苦的斗争。“你实际上是在通过这些改进来推销保险，这并不总是容易的，”该市交通和停车代理主管格雷格·弗朗西斯（Greg Francese）说。此外，也没有一种万能的灵丹妙药。霍博肯位于纽约市对岸，是一个人口不足 6 万、高度依赖公共交通的城市。那里的成功可能无法复制到孟菲斯或达拉斯等交通死亡高发地区。

But it’s not impossible. Take Edmonton, Alberta, a sprawling, car-centric Canadian city of around one million people: Between 2015 and 2020, it cut traffic fatalities by 63% and serious injuries by 40% by adjusting speed limits and improving signals at crosswalks. Progress meter … 6. We know how to tweak intersections and adjust traffic signals. Getting the funding and will to roll out those changes is the big red light.

但这并非不可能。以加拿大阿尔伯塔省埃德蒙顿市为例，这是一个拥有约 100 万人口、以汽车为中心的广阔城市：在 2015 年至 2020 年间，通过调整限速和改善人行横道信号灯，该市将交通死亡人数减少了 63%，重伤人数减少了 40%。进度表 … 6。我们知道如何调整路口和交通信号灯。获得实施这些变革的资金和意愿才是最大的红灯。