RICHMOND, Va. -- Richmond was amongst several U.S. cities included in a national report calling on localities to create safer streets.
The report, “Beyond the Blame: How Cities Can Learn From Crashes to Create Safer Streets Today," was released Tuesday by Strong Towns, a non-profit focused on creating content to help build better communities.
"There are many, many things that cities can do, there's many things local leaders can do, people that care in their community. There are many things we can do and many of those are quick and cheap, and they are easy to do and make our streets substantially safer," said Charles Marohn, Founder of Strong Towns.
The findings of the report are comprised of 18 in-depth crash studies from the last year and a half.
"In most of the crashes we looked at people were using the streets in very reasonable ways. Streets are designed and built in a way that makes them dangerous even for the most careful driver," Marohn said. "And what we put together in this report is designed to give local leaders a path, a way to take action."
He said cities can learn from each fatal crash and in a presentation highlighted four of the main things outside of human error that contributed to the crashes:
- High-speed road design
- Road designs that don't equate to people walking and biking
- Dangerous intersection design
- Visibility and lighting issues
"We saw again and again places where we had adequately lit driving surfaces in ways that put people on bikes, people walking, people in wheelchairs in glare or in shadow," Marohn said.
The 2023 crash that killed VCU student Mahrokh Khan was included in the report. The analysis states the place she was hit has a dangerous intersection design.
"There have been students hit in this location subsequent to the one that we examined, and it just had a number of design flaws, things that we would design if we were just concerned with moving traffic, but if we were concerned with safety we would alleviate and do differently," Marohn said.
With these findings, the organization made several recommendations city leaders can implement quickly and at a low cost.
They include establishing a crash analysis studio and using temporary traffic control devices to respond quickly.
"Low cost, plastic flexible bollards for a grand total cost of $140. That $140 can save a human life. That type of low-cost investment and quick build solution and effect it has on safety makes it well worth contemplating in other communities," said Hoboken, New Jersey Mayor Ravinder Bhalla, who was a part of the report presentation.
Marohn said it’s vital more cities begin to address this issue aggressively.
"Cities can find themselves in a position where they can look after their residents, actually make their streets function better," he said. "Cities big, cities medium size, cities small all across the board what we see is that our design is not safe, the way we approach it does not result in safety, we are seeing tens of thousands of people die and we have the capacity to actually do it."
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