 Welcome. I'm Peter Rossigan. I'm your host on the two wheel revolution, which is a program about micro mobility or personal mobility, getting around on bikes or e-bikes, e-scooters, e-skateboards, also walking and eventually we'll get to wheelchairs. So we have very important matter discussed today, but first I want to just say briefly, this is my first recording since the tragedy on Maui. The numbers are now over a hundred dead, the unhunt hold numbers injured. Our hearts are broken and we all, our hearts go out to the people of Maui and the people of Lahaina and the survivors. It's just unbelievable. But we're going to talk about another very serious incident. The numbers are not quite as strong, but we're having a record number of automobile fatalities here on Oahu particularly. And that's a very serious concern. So we're going to talk today to Daniel Alexander, who is with the Hollow City and County, and he is the Vision Zero Coordinator. And Daniel, welcome. Thank you for coming on the show. Yeah, thanks so much for having me covering this subject. So 25 words or less short the elevator speech. What is Vision Zero? Vision Zero is a statement that we don't have to have fatalities on our street. That is unacceptable and that we can and should do something about it. And in the simplest sense, that's what it is. That's pretty simple. So your goal, our goal is really to get to zero traffic fatalities. Is that right? That's the goal, yes. It's saying we should always be working towards that goal, understanding that we have a long way to go. But if we truly are saying that zero is the number, that means that we're putting safety first in all our decisions and not saying, oh, well, you know, if we get it round by 50%, that's good enough. But you know, we have to really be striving at the high. So this really is an aspirational goal. Tell us a little bit about what's the problem? What are the what are the numbers? What are the facts and figures on our our situation today? So over the last decade, we on Oahu have had a fatality a week on our streets on someone. I think we have some slides we can show about this film. Yeah, I think we do. And it, you know, when we started really looking at the numbers, we realized it's right around 52 fatalities a week, if you average it out. 52 a year. Oh, sorry, 52 a year or one a week, which is just, you know, if you we know, you know, those of us that have been liars know we had a problem. But when you put it in the sense that every week someone is dying on our streets on average, it really gets the urgency of the issue and how unacceptable it is. Things occur. I think it's worth remembering that for every person that dies, there are, you know, who knows how many relatives, friends, family, people that are are going to live without these these people. So that the surviving numbers are have got to be astronomical. If it's 52 on average a year, the survivors must be in in the several hundreds or a thousand. Yeah, yeah, I mean, the impacts around that person's world are so pronounced. I mean, they could be massive financial impacts to the family, of course, you know, psychological trauma and the loss of, you know, a parent or of a child even. Yeah, I personally have worked with some family members of people that were killed on their streets. And, you know, I mean, the loss of someone you love is really profound and life changing. And I think, you know, it's powerful to say that we can do something about it, that we can, we can make a difference that we can prevent these tragedies from occurring. So that's really what we're trying to do. And I think, you know, in addition to all the people around those that died, they're impacted. A lot of people are seriously injured. Our severe injuries are about five X. So those are people that, you know, maybe are going to be paralyzed or not have full use of their bodies or brain damage, that sort of thing, whose lives are forever altered. And I think what's showing on the slide there is that, you know, in recent years, we're definitely not making progress. The numbers have not been going down. And I think one thing that was interesting for us in 2020, with COVID, we saw a large decrease in traffic volumes. But the figures there, we didn't see any decrease in fatalities or serious injuries. People were driving faster. People were getting more reckless. So, you know, it's going to take a lot of solutions, just cutting down, you know, the miles people are driving alone is not going to do it. But we need a lot of things that we're doing by all actors to make it. I'll add one other class of people to the victims of traffic deaths and injuries. And that is the people that caused them. You know, I think you, if nobody wants to live the rest of their life knowing that they took a life with their vehicle or with their, even with their bicycle, whatever, the people that are the drivers who sometimes walk away unscathed or those responsible, I think they, they bear a burden for the rest of their natural lives. Undoubtedly, I mean, you know, I think that's, you know, part of Vision Zero is that everyone has a role. And, you know, some people do behave recklessly. Some drivers are behaving recklessly. But we've also developed society some social norms of dangerous driving, of speeding, you know, that 10 over is acceptable, that that's kind of, well, that 10 over could be the difference in you being able to see and respond to someone crossing the street and not being able to see and respond. You end up killing them. Or even, you know, we have a campaign right now that we're working on. But, you know, we see a lot of areas where drivers don't stop for pedestrian and crosswalks to the point it's almost, you know, socially normalized, not to do that, even though I'm here in danger at some point. Before we get into the causes, can you break down the 52 average a bit in terms of, you know, what part of that is drivers? What part of that is bicyclists? What part of that is young people, old people? I know, I mean, the victims are across the board, but do you, can you break the numbers down a bit for us? Yeah, so within that, the two groups that are really disproportionately impacted are pedestrians, which account for a little over a third. So if you imagine, you know, all the travel that occurs on our island, a third of it is not by foot, even though there are lots of foot traffic. But so a full third of those killed are pedestrians slightly over. And then our capuna are the most adversely impacted those over 65 years of age, where the fatality rate is something like 4x what it is for the population as a whole. So, you know, and that's partly fragility. And one thing we realized is that as you're older, unfortunately, the same crash that would a younger person would survive from an older person won't, but we need a system that supports, supports, you know, people walking, people biking, and people driving safely. Yeah, so those are some of some of the brawnards. You know, so motorcyclists are actually pretty heavily overrepresented as well on the motor vehicle front and bicyclists. You know, if you look at it from a youth perspective, they are overrepresented, but you know, we see somewhere in the neighborhood of two to three fatalities a year. Okay. I would imagine, I guess that bicyclists are more injury prone than death prone, just off the top of my head. But either way, I mean, you know, whether you're killed or injured, is kind of a small difference in the end of, in terms of suffering and for the person involved. So you started talking a little bit. Well, we got, you've got to sign up on the wall behind you there. I think we have a photo. We may be skipping ahead a little bit, but this is one of the things that you're doing to kind of raise the awareness out of the world. Is that correct? Yeah. So the, so when we dug deep into the crash data amongst those pedestrian crashes, the most issues, the most common types of crash are pedestrians and crosswalks that signalize their sections and left turning vehicles. So, you know, the vehicle can make a left, but they need to yield for oncoming traffic and pedestrians. And so that was a really big factor. And then pedestrians crossing that uncontrolled crosswalks is where there's no traffic signal, but there's a crosswalk pedestrian has the legal right to cross. And we found we have a lot of issues at those as well. So, you know, there's a lot of infrastructure changes to address those. But one thing that we're working on is an information campaign. And we have these signs that we've placed out that show the percentage of drivers that are stopping for a pedestrian when they have the legal obligation to do so pedestrian is crying across. And the point is to raise awareness. This is an important issue and hopefully develop some form of, you know, either social pressure or people, you know, wanting to do better. And hopefully drivers just more cognizant of this issue. And I mean, every time you brought you as a driver approach a crosswalk, you should be looking for pedestrians. And if you see one, you should stop. That's if you we all care about each other. So fulfill that, you know, fulfill that care for others and look out and stop her. So these other kind of infrastructure things we've talked about in some of the programs, but the speed bumps, the the traffic calming devices and some of the speed bumps actually are our pedestrian crosswalks. Those are all and the, you know, the red light cameras, these are all part of the physical structure that's trying to change things. Is that right? Yeah, absolutely. If you could pop up the picture again, you know, at that crossing, which was one of our we have this at nine locations on the island. It's one of the better performing sites. And sorry, you can't see very well in the picture, but this is on Punch Ball Street and there's a pedestrian crossing refuge. So in the middle, pedestrians cross one half of the street and they have a physical refuge in the middle where they can kind of regroup and then focus their energy and attention on the other side of the street. And it's a really effective tool in one of the key infrastructure pieces in our toolbox. Yeah, you'd like to think that if people are made aware of the danger, they will respond correctly in an ideal world or even in a less than perfect world that, again, spare yourself a lifetime of woes and don't look for those people or could be your grandmother, could be your grandfather, your friend's grandmother, grandfather. So in attention and the speed is obviously still one of the biggest factors, I'm assuming. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, part of our analysis. So speed and attention and inebriation are the leading contributing factors and crashes, each contributing to about a third crashes reported. And when we talk to the police, they've said speed is under reported. It's often a little hard to ascertain. And yeah, you know, it's likely under reported and there's even more of a problem. So, you know, really, you know, the speed limit is there for a reason. And sometimes people think, you know, it's what I can get away with getting a ticket. I mean, it's there for safety. It's there for your safety and safety of others. It's something we are planning on a similar campaign, not necessarily of signs, but a campaign about raising awareness about the negative impacts of speeding and the importance of slowing down. I think we have a slide about how about the breakdown of speeding. Yeah, here we go. So just very quickly, what is this showing us? So this shows the survivability of a pedestrian getting hit at these different speeds. It shows it's really not a linear relationship. You hit someone at 10 miles an hour on the chances of surviving extremely high. And then you take the all the way up to 50 miles an hour and the chance of them surviving is nonexistent at all. So, you know, it's not just, you know, your ability to it's really multiple factors, you know, as you're speeding, your vision reduces, you get tunnel vision. You're looking just in front of you, so you don't see things. And then, of course, your reaction, when you factor in your reaction time and your braking time, those have, they are going to mean you go further before you once you realize what's happening, you break, it's got to take you longer to actually stop. And then if you actually hit someone, the impacts. So really speeding is just, you know, it's really at the core of our safety issues. And I think if we could just bring our speeds down by 10 miles an hour across our whole system, that would be the most impactful thing we could do. You would see, you know, a massive reduction in fatalities, which is nice. That's good to know. It's clearly, you know, on a small island, 10 miles an hour, everybody is going too fast. We got to get back to the, you know, Hawaiian style of, you know, late, no big thing. And why everybody has to be going so quickly on such a small island is still untravenable, although, you know, all of us, I do it. I get into my car. I certainly, you know, the traffic, I see the signs, but, you know, 30 miles into 25 miles on what, you know, it's, it's just, unfortunately, it's human nature. And I guess the other two factors, inebriation and lack of attention also contribute to speed because they turn into, you know, you think you can control your car when you can't or you're, you're just not paying attention. So I think you're right. If we could get everybody to just say 10 miles per hour or less at any given moment, things might be a lot better. That's absolutely the case. I mean, I, you know, I think if we all have a kind of a safety ethos, you know, leave early. Don't put yourself in the position where you're rushing. You know, we try to do too much sometimes, but you shouldn't sacrifice safety for, you know, trying to make your meeting, you know, if you're going to be three minutes late, then you should accept that for keeping yourself at other safe. Okay. So in this, one of the things I looked at your PowerPoint that you do in public presentations, and we should say that if people want to learn more about it, they give them a place to go right now if they wanted to learn more about this whole campaign. The easiest way to find us is just, if you just Google or search Vision Zero on the Lulu, you'll find we have a webpage dedicated to this. It's the slides that we're pulling from. They're all up there. Got a lot of great information on there. We have some current surveys going right now too. So opportunities for people to put. And one of the slides that particularly impressed me, which I think we can pull up, is called a change. It's a change of attitude, I guess, not just about the obvious thing about speeding and things like that, but change of approach. I mean, we used to think pretty much every accident that involved a pedestrian was a pedestrian's fault somehow. But you're trying to change that attitude. Can you tell us a little more about that? Yeah. So Vision Zero, you know, I think at its root, we're saying, you know, it's not that engineers and planners haven't cared about traffic safety, but clearly we've gotten where we are somehow. And the system has gotten as well. So we need to shake up that system. And part of that is saying that Zero is the acceptable number of traffic fatalities. And then there are other parts of it. So moving away from the term accident using crash, you know, the accent implies we couldn't do anything about it. Well, we could. We could do a lot about it. And so if we say it's a crash, and then we could think about what could have been done or what we could do in the future to prevent it. And I think this slide kind of goes over some of the factors of ways that we're thinking about it. So, you know, crashes at some level are going to be part of our system, fender benders and whatnot. But I think as a society and engineers and planners, we need to look at where people are being injured and killed. And they're not necessarily the same crashes because fender benders, for example, solve the result in any significant injury. Other factors, you know, a system that depends, and in the largest extent, it kind of said, our system is that you're all as drivers and pedestrians, you're responsible for your individual actions. And we expect you to behave perfectly. And which I think by approach that says more we're a community and we need to look after each other. That's the vision there. I think it's really rooted in our local culture of, we need to care for each other. People are going to make poor decisions sometime. And if we don't have that collective responsibility, it's going to result in negative outcomes. Yeah. I think that's terrific. I think we all know in our hearts that we're going to occasionally go too fast. We're going to occasionally step out in a crosswalk or in the middle of the street when we shouldn't. And we just need to be aware of our responsibility as, whether we're in the car or we're on the street and of the other's responsibility. It's not just, it doesn't just fall on one side of the equation. Although I will say, if you're in a 5,000 pound metal vehicle, you have some added responsibility compared to the person that is a pedestrian that's pulling a shopping cart or even a bicyclist. I do think we're having a little bit of a change in car culture in this country. And we hope that the result will be a little more safety all around. Yeah. I think one, just to add on what you're saying, when you get behind the wheel, you're taking on an enormous responsibility. I think we all recognize that when we have such power or we're driving this heavy vehicle that can go very fast, power always comes with responsibility. I think that's something we can really take to heart when we go out there. But just to get into what you were starting to say, I think we have heard more and more from people, they want lower speeds. We're, as the city, our Department of Transportation Service, we're receiving a record request for traffic calming. I think there has been a shift that people are saying, we want safer streets, they're becoming more cognizant of it. And they want to be able to go outside and go for a walk and feel comfortable to cross the street and feel comfortable even to be able to drive and not worry that someone's going to be flying down the road and hit them. So let me, I agree with you. And I've often said, every time I go over a speed bumper or come to one of those calming things, I say, oh, damn. And then I say, God, it's worth it if it saves a life. I've had the experience and probably everyone has or getting in the car, driving somewhere, pulling up in front of the place and thinking, gee, I don't remember a single thing about this trip. Because you are sort of automatic. You can, some part of your brain functions and keeps you safe while another part of your brain is somewhere else. Is there something we can do about that kind of, that's the inattention. But it's not, most of the time you're driving okay, but you're just not conscious of what you're doing. So there's the individual, what we can all do to just be more cognizant of it. But from a planning and engineering perspective, there's what you brought up. It's putting out traffic calming measures. Part of it is getting people to pay attention. Some of the resistance to traffic calming measures you brought out, for example, around about. And people say, well, that's kind of confusing. And I have to learn how to do it. And when I get there, I have some anxiety. I don't know how to navigate it. You, at that point, the driver is thinking really hard about what's in front of them and safe way to navigate it. And that's exactly where it's good. That's the right place you want drivers. When they're going to be crossing, I mean, intersections, they're crossing the path, pedestrians, cars, you want people on high alert and giving their all. And so part of it is, individuals can do it themselves. But if the system, trying to mix it really easy, if you have generous wide lanes, and you don't have any traffic controls in place, and they're just flying down, of course, they'll become kind of mindless because it's really easy. There's nothing to worry about. But that's not fitting with an environment where you have people crossing the street, bicyclists on the side of the street. People complain about roundabouts here. They need to go to Europe, where some roundabouts have not one lane, but two, three, four, five lanes or, and not just one other, not just a right and a left and a straight ahead, but four or five different avenues coming out like the Champs-Élysées in Paris. Anybody that complains about roundabouts here just should be, if I may say, slapped up the side of the head and sent to France for a little while, but we're not going to do that. So this program is about a two-wheel revolution. Primarily we're talking here about bicycling, e-bikes and all the rest. And so let me get your views on that. I know you used to work for the Hawaii Bicycling League. And so you're, I'm hoping you're, that's still near and dear to your heart. We've got some slides from your presentation that I would like you to talk about, the unique or the unusual aspects of bicycling in terms of safety. So we can get over the first of those three slides up and you can talk to that a bit. Yeah. So, you know, a little unlike the pedestrian data where we saw, you know, really prominent problem areas, the bicycle data is a little more diffused in a sense, but the one most common factor or I would say condition, you see that bicyclists are getting hit outside of bikeways, outside of where they have a dedicated space to ride. And they're getting, when they're in that environment, they're getting hit by crossing vehicles, by turning vehicles, like getting insideswiped or rear-ended. But you know, I know from bicycle education that when you have infrastructure, the bicyclist's behavior is also far more predictable and consistent. They're in their bikeway, they know where to be. And when you don't have a bikeway, suddenly they start doing all sorts of odd things. But on the sidewalk, they're doing, they're in places that are not consistent and predictable. So, I think that was from, you know, one of the most prominent things that showed in the crash analysis. And, you know, from a countermeasure perspective, I think that's really a lot of where we're looking is that providing those dedicated spaces for people to bicycle. And of course, as they're protected facilities, you're going to get more safety benefit. And when I say protected, I mean, you know, you don't just have the bike lane with a line of paint, but you have some sort of physical thing, either a delineator or a plastic post, or they're actually entirely on separate environments, as you said, to the roadway. And that's, you know, our safety record, if you say on our paths where people are off of the street entirely is like perfect, you know. Of course, you do have bicyclists who have solo crashes sometimes, but those are unlikely, almost never result in fatalities and are unlikely to even result in severe injuries. I'm concerned personally about the differences in the speed capability of the different kind of two-wheel and three-wheel and four-wheel vehicles out there. We've got some traditional bicycles, some of whom are very slow. We've got some e-bikes now, some of which are capable of going very fast. E-skateboards, e-scooters, which run the gamut of speeds. And we're all trying to inhabit what, unfortunately, you're always going to be kind of narrow bike lanes. So how do we deal with that? And that's a big question, how we deal with it. I'm not sure that SOE have great answers now on that deal with the proliferation of electric micro-mobility devices. But you're right, speed is inherent. I mean, that's a lot of the vulnerability of bicyclists where they don't have a bikeway is they're going very slow in relation to traffic. Even if they're fast, they're going 15 miles an hour. So if the car is going dirty, there's an inherent conflict there. But then as you suddenly the e-bikes go in 25 or 30 miles an hour, you have a different set of issues. And I think part of it is its bikeway design. So having the bikeways, because as you get these different vehicles, they're going to be where you don't have a specific space for them to be on the road, you're going to get even more variability of behavior. The e-bike is going to be maybe in the middle lane even because they're trying to pass the right turning vehicles. But the bicyclist is going to be on the sidewalk because it's the only place they feel comfortable. So I think good infrastructure is a way that we can deal with that. That's clearly got to be one of the big factors because infrastructure is something you don't have to think about or you don't have to plan. You respond to the infrastructure by in the way you drive, in the way you walk, in the way you cycle. So anywhere you're going, having the right kind of infrastructure is important. And we've had that again and again in safety discussions. Well, we're running out of time, Daniel. I really appreciate your time and I appreciate what you're trying to do here. I mean, talk about a job that lifetime employment to get to zero traffic fatality. Really not. All right, you're more optimistic than I am. So tell us one more time if people are watching this, they want to know more about Vision Zero. What's the best way for them to find out? The best way is just go to your search browser and search Vision Zero Honolulu. Come to our website. You can find all about it. That's great. And this is a national campaign, which we didn't mention, right? This is not just Honolulu. It's a national idea. But we have our local, the state actually adopted a law, I should have mentioned, saying that Vision Zero is the law of the state and counties, you go adopt policy. So we're fulfilling that. So that's good. Other places probably are not as, you know, I mean, we do care about each other at the end of the day. We do have the Aloha spirit. We do have the sense that all being in the same canoe. So, you know, that's great to hear. Daniel, thank you so much. This is a really important 52 plus people on average a year and hundreds of survivors who are suffering as a result of what happens to either their injuries or what happened to their relatives and friends. It's just, it's an epidemic and very close to one. We just have to do more about it. And I thank you for all that you're doing and the people in your area complete streets. We'll be back in a couple of weeks with more discussion of the Two-Wheel Revolution. And I'm Peter Rossick. Thank you so much for joining us. Aloha.