Why I support Vision Zero

My kids bike to school most days, and every day I worry about them. Oak Park has a significant number of serious traffic related injuries every year. This most impacts children and our seniors. The last three pedestrian fatalities in Oak Park were senior citizens.

When involved in a crash, fatality or serious injury is 12x as likely for a cyclist and 15x as likely for a pedestrian. We must stop accepting these statistics as a matter of course and do something to address this critical safety issue.

I strongly support Vision Zero, a comprehensive plan designed to decrease and eventually eliminate traffic deaths in Oak Park. 

Vision Zero uses a 'traffic calming by policy' approach to give our city planners the tools they need to to keep pedestrians and bicyclists safe. Staff will be able to use traffic, crash, and injury data to deploy targeted traffic calming measures without waiting for citizens to request them.

The Vision Zero plan is part of a national movement to make streets safer by design, using measures such as pinch points, speed tables, chicanes, and intersection daylighting to control traffic, even when the police aren't around to hand out tickets. The design of the streets and intersection enforce proper behavior by default.

Vision Zero provides a proven toolkit I will work hard to see it implemented in Oak Park.