Can Raleigh prevent all fatal car crashes? It thinks it has a shot and wants your help
More than 40 people were killed in car crashes in Raleigh in 2023. The year before that, it was more than 60, with many more people seriously injured.
Now the city has set out to cut those numbers to zero by 2045. It calls the effort Safe Streets for All and says it will include strategies to make roads safer to navigate and to encourage people to be more careful as they drive, walk, cycle or scooter around town.
The city is reaching out to the public for its ideas through an online survey and a series of public meetings (see below). The first was held this week at the Barwell Road Community Center in Southeast Raleigh.
It’s an ambitious goal, concedes Sean Driskill, who heads the city’s Vision Zero program. But if you focus on the most serious crashes — those that kill or send people to the hospital — it’s possible, Driskill said.
“We know there’s going to be crashes; we’re not trying to eliminate crashes,” he said. “We just don’t want crashes to end in deaths or serious injuries.”
Vision Zero is the name adopted by a national movement to try to eliminate fatal crashes. The N.C. Department of Transportation and several local governments, including Raleigh, Durham and Robeson County, have established their own Vision Zero programs.
Zero crash deaths is the only acceptable goal, proponents say, but recent trends have shown how difficult it is. Highway deaths in North Carolina and nationwide spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the rate of deaths per miles traveled and per capita remained higher in 2023, the most recent year for complete data, than in 2019.
One city that has achieved zero crash deaths is Hoboken, New Jersey, which hasn’t had a traffic death in eight years. But Hoboken doesn’t have some of the challenges that Raleigh does, such as interstate highways, six-lane boulevards with 45 mph speed limits or a city limit that ever pushes into the countryside.
The Barwell Road area of Southeast Raleigh is one such area, where residents say basic safety measures such as sidewalks, crosswalks and street lights aren’t keeping pace with development. New subdivisions and apartment complexes have those features, but existing neighborhoods and the roads between them do not, said Ulysses Lane, who heads the Southeast Raleigh Citizens Advisory Council.
“They’re adding it with new developments, but what about the older developments?” Lane said. “You’ve got gaps between new developments and old ones.”
Lydia Alleyne, who lives off Barwell Road, agreed.
“We need more sidewalks. Between Poole Road and Rock Quarry Road, there’s no street lights,” Alleyne said. “They’re allowed to build houses off Barwell Road, but there are no lights.”
Human behavior a big part of the problem
The city began its Safe Streets for All effort by gathering crash data to show where all the fatal and serious crashes took place between 2015 and 2023. Not surprisingly, most of those crashes occurred on the busiest roads with higher speed limits, such as Capital Boulevard and New Bern Avenue.
Only 8% of Raleigh roads and 3% of its intersections account for the majority of severe traffic crashes, the city found.
Sometimes improvements are simple and inexpensive. City traffic engineers have learned, for example, that they can prevent T-bone crashes if they change signals at intersections to allow left turns only when oncoming traffic is stopped, Driskill said.
But improving roads and signals will only go so far. Raleigh police reports indicate that 85% of fatal crashes involved some sort of risky behavior, such as speeding or driving impaired. Of those killed in a car or truck, 71% were not wearing seat belts.
“We’re fully aware that changing behaviors is the way to do this,” Driskill said. “That is going to be the hardest part to achieve.”
The city set a goal of eliminating serious crashes by 2045 but hopes to make steady progress before then. Setting a 20-year goal acknowledges that it won’t be easy, said Bradley Reynolds of WSP, an engineering firm helping with the city’s effort.
“It also establishes a timeframe that’s not too far out that everybody’s like, ‘Well, this is not my problem,’” Reynolds said. “This is something that we all want to take ownership of.”
To find the Safe Streets for All survey, go to publicinput.com/x1083.
The remaining meetings for the project will run from 4:30 to 7 p.m. on the following days:
▪ Wednesday, Feb. 5, at Green Road Community Center, 4201 Green Road.
▪ Monday, Feb. 17, at Carolina Pines Community Center, 2305 Lake Wheeler Road.
▪ Tuesday, Feb. 25, at Laurel Hills Community Center, 3808 Edwards Mill Road.
▪ Wednesday, March 5, at Abbotts Creek Community Center, 9950 Durant Road,
