Some day, coronavirus isolation will end and Atlantans will return to the roads. And the Atlanta City Council has a surprise for you drivers: Most streets in the city will have
a 25 mph speed limit. It’s
called Vision Zero, a scheme created in the late 1990s in Sweden with the goal of squeezing roads and slowing down traffic so that no one gets killed. Hence the Zero. The effort passed last week in a virtual City Council meeting on a consent agenda, a vote where routine and non-controversial items are lumped together and passed without discussion. The effort is “non-controversial,” I suppose, because most of the public doesn’t yet know about it.
“People will notice when they start driving on streets that they remember were 35 mph and are now 25,” said Councilman Howard Shook. “That’s when the light bulbs will go off.” Yeah, blue flashing lights. The effort is laudable: If you slow down cars you can save lives.
A graphic put together by the city said nine out of 10 pedestrians survive being hit by a car at 20 mph, but it drops to five out of 10 at 30 mph.
That
seems a bit high compared to most
other literature I found. For instance, a study by the
AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety said, “The average risk of death for a pedestrian reaches 10% at an impact speed of 23 mph, 25% at 32 mph.” But the city wanted to win an argument, so it picked the best data available. Still, the point remains — slower is better if you’re to be struck by a vehicle.
The Vision Zero effort has been put into effect in 40-some cities across the U.S., mostly in the Northeast, Florida and on the Left Coast
