{"id":885,"date":"2019-12-27T12:07:28","date_gmt":"2019-12-27T19:07:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.washingtonbikelaw.com\/blog\/?p=885"},"modified":"2025-12-04T15:48:03","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T23:48:03","slug":"working-to-make-vision-zero-a-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.washingtonbikelaw.com\/blog\/working-to-make-vision-zero-a-reality.html","title":{"rendered":"Working to Make Vision Zero a Reality"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Washington Bike Law doesn\u2019t just represent individual clients, we work to make Vision Zero a reality by holding road designers responsible for unsafe streets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Vision Zero is an international\nstrategy to eliminate traffic fatalities and severe injuries while increasing safe, healthy, and equitable\nmobility for everyone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Washington\nBike Law recently settled a case against the City of Kent involving a dangerous\ncrosswalk, so we can now share with you some things we learned litigating it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vision Zero\nis an ethical framework stemming from the premise that it is unacceptable for\npeople to suffer serious injuries or death as a result of traffic violence.\nBefore Vision Zero, serious injuries and loss of life were merely factors to be\nconsidered in the cost-benefit analysis of transportation engineers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vision Zero was first approved by the Swedish Parliament in 1997.<\/a> Seattle produced its first Vision Zero plan in 2015<\/a>. <\/a>The state of Washington has been producing its Target Zero Highway Safety Plans since 2000. Washington and Seattle\u2019s plans both call for zero deaths or serious injuries on our roads by 2030. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What about Kent? Here is an excerpt from a deposition of its Transportation Engineering Manager and officially designated speaking agent:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We also took the deposition of Kent\u2019s Police Research and Development Analyst, who was designated as the City\u2019s speaking agent on Vision Zero. She talked about \u201cshared responsibly\u201d and questioned whether drivers even had a duty to stop for pedestrians at intersections. We followed up with her:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We have\npreviously written about how Kent\u2019s\nstreets are dangerous for pedestrians<\/a>, and these depositions show what the\npeople at the top are thinking (or not thinking). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In another\ndeposition, we asked Kent\u2019s Transportation Engineering Manager:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The\nintersection in our case involved a marked crosswalk for the Interurban Trail\nthat crosses Willis Street at 74th<\/sup> Ave W. People wanting to use the\ncrosswalk always approach a red light because it defaults to red. They must use\nwhat is sometimes called a \u201cbeg button\u201d to get a green light. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, drivers\napproaching the same \u201cT\u201d intersection from 74th<\/sup> Ave have two lanes:\none that can only turn left; and one that can only turn right. Drivers in the\nleft-turn lane can only drive through the marked crosswalk. The signals for all\nthe car lanes turn green simultaneously, regardless of whether someone has\npressed the beg button to cross the road safely. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This\nintersection is shown from above on Google Maps:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We asked\nKent\u2019s Transportation Engineering Manager how its design compared to the design\nof demolition derby tracks:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Kent claimed\nthat its design was safe because drivers should know that they have a duty to\nstop at crosswalks\u2014even though its own speaking agent wasn\u2019t sure what\nconstitutes a crosswalk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the Vision Zero Network<\/a>, the \u201cVision Zero approach recognizes that people will sometimes make mistakes, so the road system and related policies should be designed to ensure those inevitable mistakes do not result in severe injuries or fatalities<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This means that streets need to be designed to be safe even without perfect human behavior. While road users are required to follow the rules of the road, if users regularly fail to comply (for instance, not stopping for people in crosswalks) then system designers\u2014traffic engineers and lawmakers\u2014need to change the system<\/em><\/strong> to make it safer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This ethical platform loop is illustrated below:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We asked Kent\u2019s Transportation Engineering Manager about this: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Vision\nZero means that governments must take into account not just what they think\nusers should do<\/em><\/strong> on their streets, but also what they actually\ndo<\/em><\/strong>, like not stopping for people in crosswalks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vision Zero policies\nwill make our streets safer and better, but there is a learning curve. Road\ndesigners, politicians, and the public all need to understand that crashes\nresulting in serious injuries and deaths on our roads are not accidents. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They are\npreventable, but we all need to be part of their prevention. At Washington Bike\nLaw, we\u2019d very much prefer for people to not be seriously injured and killed on\nour streets. But when they are, we work to hold people\u2014and<\/em><\/strong> road\ndesigners\u2014responsible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the\nCity of Kent\u2019s insurance ultimately paid to compensate our client, Kent has yet\nto make that crosswalk safe. We attempted to negotiate safety improvements, but\nthe City refused. We hope than it will improve it before someone else is\nseriously injured or killed. Unfortunately, we cannot force our leaders to do\nthe right thing\u2014but litigation and significant verdicts can help make our\nstreets safer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We still have much work to do, particularly with people who don\u2019t follow this issue. Someone in our community recently wrote in the Seattle Times<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The\nnonprofit Transportation Alternatives<\/a> disagrees:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Not accepting\nthat crashes are just accidents is an easy way you can help achieve Vision Zero.\nThere\u2019s even a hashtag, #CrashNotAccident, but please don\u2019t use it while\ndriving.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Washington Bike Law recently settled a case against the City of Kent involving a dangerous crosswalk, so we can now share with you some things we learned litigating it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15,23,13,14],"class_list":["post-885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bicycle-advocates","tag-kent","tag-settlement","tag-vision-zero","tag-zero-vision"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.washingtonbikelaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.washingtonbikelaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.washingtonbikelaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.washingtonbikelaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.washingtonbikelaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=885"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.washingtonbikelaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1370,"href":"https:\/\/www.washingtonbikelaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885\/revisions\/1370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.washingtonbikelaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.washingtonbikelaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.washingtonbikelaw.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}