By a 6-1 vote, the Santa Barbara City Council embraced the sweeping goal of zero traffic fatalities within city limits — a platform dubbed Vision Zero in Sweden, San Francisco, and New York — put forward by bicycle- and pedestrian-transit advocates. How the council hopes to implement this agenda has yet to be seen, but, typically, it involves stepped-up coordination between traffic engineers and traffic cops coupled with an intense public awareness campaign.
In Sweden, the number of road fatalities reportedly dropped by half after Vision Zero was adopted; in San Francisco, it dropped by 25 percent. Giving heft to the advocates’ argument are statistics showing that Santa Barbara ranks second in number of pedestrians injured and fourth for bicyclists hurt in traffic collisions out of 102 California cities with populations between 50,000 and 100,000.
In terms of overall injuries and fatalities, according to the California Office of Traffic Safety, Santa Barbara ranks worst. In the past 10 years, there’ve been 28 fatal accidents, five involving bicyclists and 12 pedestrians. Such rankings, however, can be interpreted many ways. Of the 964 bicycle injuries reported in the past 10 years, for example, only 10 percent were deemed “serious” enough by police to require medical attention. Of the five bicycle fatalities, three of the riders were seriously intoxicated.