Positive Story: The City Where Traffic Fatalities Vanished | Why This Matters

Positive Story: The City Where Traffic Fatalities Vanished | Why This Matters

Why this story matters: This article highlights a practical example of progress driven by people, ideas, and persistence. Quick summary: This story highlights recent developments related to bicycles, showing how constructive action can lead to meaningful results. A U.S. city of 60,000 people would typically see around six to eight traffic fatalities every year. But Hoboken, New Jersey ? They haven’t had a single fatal crash for nine years — since January 17, 2017, to be exact. Campaigns for seatbelts, lower speed limits and sober driving have brought national death tolls from car crashes down from a peak in the first half of the 20th century. However, many still assume some traffic deaths as an unavoidable cost of car culture. The global Vision Zero movement, by contrast, believes traffic deaths aren’t inevitable, celebrating Hoboken and related milestones in larger cities like Helsinki, Finland , as proof of what can be achieved. By studying which factors contribute to local crash fatalities,…