What Should We Do to Make Roads in Wake County Safer?
This is the second post in our two-part series on bicycle and pedestrian safety. Click here to read part one, which explores the number of bicyclist- and pedestrian-related crashes that occur in Wake County each year.
Between 2012 and 2016, drivers of motor vehicles struck and killed approximately 1,035 bicyclists and pedestrians in North Carolina. That’s slightly more than one person killed by a driver every two days throughout the state.
It’s small wonder then that, according to Smart Growth America’s recent Dangerous By Design report, North Carolina presently ranks as the thirteenth most dangerous state in the country for pedestrians.
Here in Wake County alone, drivers of motor vehicle strike bicyclists or pedestrians, on average, roughly every day. And unfortunately, things don’t seem to be getting better any time soon. As throughout the rest of the country, crashes involving bicyclists and pedestrians are on the rise in Wake County, up 21 percent since 2007.
As we wrote in part one of this series, Wake County sees about 325 pedestrian crashes and roughly 130 bicyclist crashes each year. People are killed or severely injured in about 9 percent of crashes involving pedestrians and roughly 6 percent of crashes involving bicyclists.
The recent rise in bicyclist and pedestrian deaths throughout the country (pedestrian deaths are at the highest point since 1990) has led many to characterize the present situation as a serious national epidemic. And we agree with this characterization.
So, what can be done to reverse this trend?
In this post, we provide an overview, in no particular order, of some of the key actions, policies, and initiatives that we believe would go furthest toward creating safer roads for all users in Wake County.
How to Protect All Road Users in Wake County
1. Invest in Better Data-Collection Methods for Bicycle and Pedestrian Travel
Thanks to the automobile-centric nature of our nationwide transportation system, we have extremely reliable tools for monitoring and recording how many cars use our roads. However, such data collection methods are sorely lacking when it comes to bicycle and pedestrian travel.
Raw frequency counts of bicycle and pedestrian crashes — such as what we’ve reported for Wake County in part one of this series — are necessary but not sufficient for assessing the safety of our roads and intersections. That’s because raw counts are affected by such things as population differences between neighborhoods and changes in seasons over time.
A well designed intersection within a highly populated community might see more crashes than a less well designed intersection within a more sparsely populated community, for example, simply because of the difference in population between those two communities.
To better gauge the safety of our bicycle and pedestrian networks, we need more than just counts of bicyclist and pedestrian crashes along specific roads and intersections. We also need what is referred to as exposure data — or raw counts of bicyclists and pedestrians at given locations. Without such data, planners cannot prioritize projects for safety improvements based on user volume. Nor can they calculate risk at specific sites by looking at crashes in the context of exposure.
Lack of good data collection methods for bicyclists and pedestrians is not just a problem in Wake County. It’s a problem throughout most of the country. According to a study published earlier this year in the Journal of Transportation Engineering, one third of bicycle and pedestrian planning agencies throughout the country do not collect any type of permanent or temporary bicycle or pedestrian counts. Moreover, while 23 agencies surveyed in the study reported having over 100 permanent counting sites for motor vehicles, none reported having more than 80 sites for bicyclists or pedestrians.
2. Adopt a Formal Complete Streets Policy
Complete Streets is an approach to transportation policy and design that requires streets within a community to be planned, designed, operated, and maintained to support safe, convenient, and comfortable travel for all users regardless of age and ability.
While Complete Streets policies can be varied to meet the specific needs of any community, the ultimate goal of any Complete Streets policy is to allow for safe travel for all residents, regardless of their chosen mode of transportation — whether walking, bicycling, driving a car, or using public transit.
Fortunately, several municipalities in Wake County have embraced the Complete Streets concept, including the City of Raleigh and the towns of Apex and Cary.
Raleigh’s Complete Streets policy, adopted back in 2015, specifically calls for incorporating more sidewalks and pedestrian safety improvements, such as traffic signals, roundabouts, bulb-outs, curb extensions, high visibility crossings, buffer zones, shared use pathways, and full ADA compliance and accessibility. The policy also calls for bicycle safety improvements such as bike lanes, bike parking, cycle tracks, wide outside lanes, sharrows, paved shoulders, and signal detection.
Complete Streets is also integrated into the 2045 Comprehensive Transportation Plan for the Town of Apex and the 2040 Community Plan for the Town of Cary. Apex recently approved it’s first comprehensive bike plan, and Cary is presently designated as a Silver-level walkable community by Walk Friendly Communities.
If residents in other Wake communities also value walkable development and growth (and we suspect that many do), then leaders in these communities should follow suit and adopt formal Complete Streets policies of their own.
3. Become a Vision Zero Community
Vision Zero is an initiative first implemented in Sweden in the 1990’s to eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe traffic-related injuries worldwide through the use of data-driven prevention methods and strategies that promote safe, healthy, equitable mobility for all.
Being a Vision Zero City means: (1) Setting clear goals for eliminating traffic fatalities and injuries; (2) Having a Mayor who has publicly and officially committed to Vision Zero; (3) Having a Vision Zero plan or strategy in place, with commitment from the Mayor to a clear time frame for implementation; and (4) Having key city departments, such as Police, Transportation, and Public Health, fully engaged in the Vision Zero plan.
Thanks to policies implemented under Vision Zero, a handful of cities are now starting to see progress in reducing traffic-related fatalities. As reported recently by StreetsblogUSA, traffic fatalities have been on the decline since about 2016 in Seattle, Boston, Portland, and New York. Portland in particular has had great success after recently lowering the default speed limit to 20 miles per hour citywide.
At present, Durham and Charlotte are the only two cities in North Carolina that have become a part of the global Vision Zero initiative. And while North Carolina has its own statewide Vision Zero Initiative, the only NC communities with, or working on adopting, a Vision Zero strategy under this initiative are Asheville, Charlotte, Durham, Greensboro, Greenville, and Robeson County.
No Wake County communities have as of yet signed on to Vision Zero, either at the global level or at the state level, and we call upon local leaders here to change that. As the State Capital, the City of Raleigh in particular should be leading the charge to save North Carolinian lives.
4. Prioritize Construction of the Highest Quality and Safest Forms of Bicycling and Pedestrian Infrastructure
While signing on to Vision Zero and adopting a formal Complete Streets policy represent crucial first steps toward greater bicycle and pedestrian safety, they are simply that — first steps.
Merely calling for more bicycle and pedestrian facilities is not enough because all forms of infrastructure are not created equal. Indeed, white paint on the shoulder of the road provides bicyclists with far less protection from drivers than physical barriers such as bollards, planters, or concrete dividers. In fact, recent research suggests that painted bike lanes might even be counterproductive.
When investing valuable time and taxpayer money in bicycling and pedestrian infrastructure, municipalities should prioritize top tier facilities — such as protected and separated bicycle lanes, cycle tracks, and multi-use paths and urban trails — over lower quality facilities such as sharrows and painted bike lanes, which do little to support safe travel.
In fact, everyone stands to benefit from building safe bicycling and pedestrian facilities. A 13-year study recently published in the Journal of Transport & Health found that having protected bike lanes leads to a dramatic decline in fatalities for all road users, not just people on bicycles. According to the study, summarized here, protected and separated bike lanes might even reduce deaths by as much as 44 percent.
5. Do More than Just Plan for Bicycling and Pedestrian Infrastructure. Fund it and Build it.
Municipalities must do more than just plan for more bicycling and pedestrian infrastructure. They must also make sure to fund those plans and follow through on implementing those plans in a timely manner.
Over the past year, a number of bicycle and pedestrian projects have stalled or been significantly delayed in Raleigh, for instance. Moreover, priority projects identified back in 2016 in the City of Raleigh’s 10 year Bike Plan still do not have target completion dates.
And although it’s extremely exciting and encouraging that progress is being made on implementing Raleigh’s overall Downtown Transportation Plan, which includes Bus-Rapid Transit (BRT), there are presently no concrete plans to fund the Downtown Bike Plan, which will be vital for building a safe, efficient, and interconnected multi-modal system for Raleigh.
Of course, local municipalities in North Carolina must do the best they can with the limited pool of money available for so-called “alternative” transportation projects. This is especially true given that the state has not funded any stand-alone bicycle or pedestrian projects since 2013. Indeed, no state funding is presently available for crosswalks, sidewalks, bike lanes, or multi-use paths that are not already part of a new road project.
For comment on this matter, we reached out to Terry Lansdell, Executive Director of the statewide advocacy organization BikeWalkNC.
Lansdell said that lack of funding from the state means that, “the burden of improving and enhancing our roads has fallen squarely on the shoulders of local communities, rather than the state department of transportation.” As a result, he says he sees areas like Wake and Mecklenburg Counties being hit especially hard as local leaders, “struggle to find capacity to address public demands for improvements and complete integration into transit projects.”
And although Vision Zero and other programs like Watch for Me NC are great starts, Lansdell says they will never do enough to affect real, lasting change on our roads because in the end everything comes down to a need to change human behavior.
“We need to support road diets and other tier 1 designs that increase safety by managing the speed of cars and by limiting the opportunity for drivers to speed,” he says. We also need to increase driver education and combat the all-too-common problems of drivers operating vehicles while drunk, impaired, or distracted, as these are, “the major safety concerns for people driving, cycling and walking.”
Of course, none of this will be possible without additional funding at the state and local levels.
6. Change How We Talk About Crashes
Committing to and implementing the above policy recommendations will surely go a long way toward improving road safety in Wake County. But if we want to go even further, we’ll need to do more than just change existing state and local policies. We’ll also need to change our society’s collective attitude toward motor vehicle crashes more generally.
To do that, each one of us will need to pay close attention to the words and phrases we use when we talk about crashes involving vulnerable road users.
For instance, when we refer to them as “accidents” we imply that motor vehicle crashes are, however tragic, merely an inevitable part of our transportation system. In actuality, however, all “accidents” have a root cause that can be fixed, either by redesigning our roads or by changing human behavior.
Moreover, when we talk about crashes, we should avoid using subtly biased language implying that bicyclist and pedestrian victims are, themselves, somehow partly at fault for being hit — language such as, “well, he wasn’t wearing a helmet” or “but she was wearing dark clothing.” This sort of “counterfactual” language is unfair because, oftentimes, such details are entirely irrelevant. Bright, reflective clothing will not save a pedestrian from a distracted driver, and a helmet will not save a bicyclist from a speeding motorist.
In transportation safety, as in all areas of life, words matter. And the language we use to describe events has a profound impact on how we perceive our world and each other. Therefore, when a crash occurs involving a bicyclist or pedestrian, it’s necessary that we use the proper language to assign appropriate personal responsibility for what happened.
Yet the words, phrases, and attitudes surrounding motor vehicle crashes are deeply ingrained within our culture. So, we know that changing the way we talk about crashes won’t come easily. In fact, we know this from personal experience — because we’ve been careless with our words at times, too.
A few readers pointed out that in our first post in this series, we too frequently talked about “motor vehicles” rather than “drivers of motor vehicles” as the major threat to bicyclists and pedestrians. Our phrasing was silly at best because it implied that a crash is somehow caused by the vehicle itself rather than by the independent, self-aware individual operating the vehicle.
Clearly, cars do not possess a sense of agency and self-control. Moreover, it’s dangerous to use language that helps put psychological distance between a crash and a driver’s actions behind the wheel. Again, words matter. And we thank our readers for holding us accountable on this.
Resources for Learning More and Getting Involved
In the end, real lasting change to improve road safety in Wake County will require hard work, support, and engagement from all of us. Without continuous demands from residents to fund and build better and safer bicyclist and pedestrian infrastructure, we will never achieve the bike-friendly and walkable communities that so many of us living here desperately want.
So, let’s all commit to stay engaged on this critically important issue and keep up with our calls for better, safer alternatives to car travel. Because unfortunately we don’t have time to delay.
We need to act now, both for the well-being of our residents — another 30 to 40 of whom stand to be needlessly killed or seriously injured by motor vehicle drivers by the end of this year alone — and for the well-being of our planet, which faces an ever-growing threat from greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.
If you need help getting started, we recommend you check out the following local organizations leading the charge to create more bike-friendly and walkable communities in our area.
- Safe Routes Wake County is our local county-wide Safe Routes to School (SRTS) program. SRTS is a national program that promotes walking and bicycling to school through infrastructure improvements, enforcement, tools, safety education, and incentives to encourage walking and bicycling to school. SRTS Wake County is currently working with five schools to develop a Model Safe Routes to School Program that can be replicated at schools across the Wake County Public School System. The effort also involves working with the school district and municipalities surrounding the schools to examine policies and practices that can improve safety for child pedestrians. The program is funded by a grant provided to UNC-Highway Safety Research Center by the John Rex Endowment.
- The Active Routes to School Project is part of North Carolina’s Safe Routes to School Program. Safe Routes to School programs are sustained efforts by parents, schools, community leaders and local, state, and federal governments to improve the health and well-being of children by enabling and encouraging them to walk and bicycle to school. Each year, the Active Routes to School Program helps to support and organize Bike/Walk to School Day Events throughout Wake County.
- The City of Raleigh’s Bicycle & Pedestrian Advisory Commission is an all-volunteer advisory body whose role is to provide leadership and guidance to City Council on all matters concerning bicycle and pedestrian activities in Raleigh. For more information about Raleigh’s BPAC, including upcoming meeting agendas and schedules, visit the Raleigh BPAC page on the City of Raleigh website. You can also engage with Raleigh BPAC Commissioners and other members of the local bicycling community through the Raleigh BPAC Facebook group.
- Oaks & Spokes is a local non-profit organization whose mission is to foster a bicycle-friendly community in Raleigh through regular group bike rides and seasonal bike festivals. The group also supports civic engagement by live streaming Raleigh BPAC meetings to social media and by organizing advocacy campaigns to support improvements to bicycling infrastructure. For more information, visit the Oaks & Spokes website. You can also follow Oaks & Spokes on Facebook and Twitter.
- Black Girls Do Bike: Raleigh is the local chapter of BlackGirlsDoBike.com, a national organization whose interest is in growing and supporting a community of women of color who share a passion for cycling. BGDB also supports bike advocacy, awareness, education and safety in all communities and corners of the world. You can learn more by visiting the BGDB: Raleigh Facebook group.
Finally, we want to hear from you. If we missed anything here, or if you have any of your own ideas on how to improve the safety of our roads here in Wake County, feel free to let us know in the comments section below.
Brian Kurilla, Ph.D. is the Policy Analyst for WakeUP Wake County and an Experimental Psychologist and Data Scientist.