What Stockholm can teach L.A. when it comes to reducing traffic fatalities - LA Times

Headlines are quick hits from media outlets from Missouri and around the world. Follow the headline link for the full story. The source of this headline says:

Over the last 15 years, Stockholm has cut pedestrian deaths by 31% and overall traffic deaths by 45%. Last year, the Swedish city suffered only six traffic deaths, or about 1 per 150,000 residents. New York had nearly five times that rate, and Los Angeles County, with somewhere around 600 traffic fatalities a year, had roughly nine times the death rate of Stockholm.

Sweden's "Vision Zero" philosophy holds that human error shouldn't be fatal. When a child runs after a bouncing ball and a speeding car strikes and kills him, for example, that death shouldn't be accepted simply as an unavoidable tragedy. Rather, it should be studied to see how it might have been averted with better road design or behavioral reinforcement or both.

We already think this way about aviation accidents. When a jet crashes, no one shrugs it off by saying, "Well, accidents happen." Instead, the government and the industry analyze the contributing factors and do everything they can to prevent such an accident from happening again.

MoBikeFed comment: Missouri as a whole has about 2 traffic fatalities per 150,000 residents. However (and unfortunately!), the relatively low rate says more about how relatively little people walk than the safety of walking in the state.

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