More than 90 Americans die every day in vehicular accidents.
The bad news? It most likely won’t change until communities get proactive when it comes to traffic and parking safety. Despite the best efforts of cities like New York, the congestion on our roadways is leading to more pollution, more accidents, and more deaths.
The good news? It’s tough to find a silver lining, but organizations like Vision Zero are tackling the problem head on. For the unfamiliar, Vision Zero is multi-national road traffic safety project that aims to achieve a highway system with no fatalities or serious injuries involving road traffic.
Vision Zero has identified “communities of concern” which it defines as the 12 percent of roads that more than 70 percent of accidents occur. Solving parking and traffic challenges in these communities is paramount to reduce the number of injuries and fatalities.
Communities of Concern include areas where the following are higher:
- Older adults and adults without vehicles
- Children and school areas
- People with disabilities
- Impoverished areas or those with lower educational attainment
- Chronic health conditions
- Safety concerns due to speed limits and crashes
We recently announced that the Florida Department of Transportation (DoT) has added All Traffic Solutions to its list of preferred vendors on the Approved Products List. Moving forward, it could be one of our signs you see on the most dangerous roadways in Florida, whether it be US-1, I-95, I-75, or an arterial or collector road. Here’s why that matters:
- Most DoTs are overburdened. Technology has changed a lot of things and has certainly made strides in impacting transportation. But, promises of tomorrow – self-driving cars, for example – still seem to be a long way off. Until these departments get some relief in dealing with the day in, day out issues they face managing transportation – whether it be cars, busses, trains, etc. – the roadways aren’t safe. Transportation options are outpacing infrastructure advances and most transportation offices are understaffed. Internet of Things (IoT) devices that enable an administrator to quickly update a sign and warn people of impending traffic or danger is a step in the right direction for managing transportation issues.
- Today’s drivers are consumers of technology. We’re in an era where smart devices and IoT devices are used for everything from turning the lights on in a home to managing an entire lighting grid for a city. Drivers – today’s consumers – understand technology. The value of a well-placed sign that provides a heads-up versus heads-down reminder of driver speed and is updated real-time has a tremendous impact.
- Technology that literally saves lives. We talked about the sobering number of deaths on the roads each day. One sign can be the difference between life and death for a driver. Signs are often overlooked because of the labor involved with setting them up. But All Traffic Solutions has devices that can be set up by a single person and provides a platform that give DoTs and municipalities the power to have visibility to their entire community at one time and act based on environmental variables. I’ve written in this space before about the fears that hold communities back from integrating smart city technologies, but adopting just one sign makes a community a smart city – and is a major step toward increasing road safety in your community.
We all know the dangers out there every time a citizen hops behind the wheel of a car and, as traffic parking and safety professionals, we have the power to put programs in place that save lives. We know you’re overtaxed and often fighting through bureaucratic red tape to make things happen. It’s hard to be proactive when you’re constantly putting out fires. But you can take the power back by leveraging traffic crash and safety data from local law enforcement, linking it up to smart devices, and proactively communicating traffic hazards.
