New street safety video aims to help reduce collisions

The City of Kitchener is making efforts to help reduce the number of injuries and death on roads from traffic collisions with the launch of a powerful new street safety video.

As part of Kitchener’s Vision Zero public education campaign, the video promotes an impactful message that traffic collisions should not be called “accidents” as they always have a cause, which means prevention is always possible.

“We want to raise awareness with residents more generally about Vision Zero and what residents can do because we all play a role,” says Aaron McCrimmon-Jones, the manager of transportation safety and policy for the City of Kitchener.

“Vehicle crashes are not accidents or chance events — they have a root cause,” he continues. “One of the analogies that we always use is that if a plane crashes, we don’t refer to it as a plane accident. Similarly, when a vehicle crashes, there’s a root cause, which is preventable.”

According to the City’s website, more than 1,200 traffic collisions occur annually on Kitchener streets, which are responsible for over 200 injuries.

As such, the City committed to studying, learning and adopting ways to help bring that number down — and it begins with their Vision Zero strategy.

“The concept of Vision Zero originated in Europe a number of years ago and the goal is that there are zero injuries and zero fatalities on City of Kitchener streets,” says McCrimmon-Jones. “The premise is based on action items under five really important categories being implemented and working together.”

As defined by the Swedish concept, those categories are evaluation, engineering, enforcement, education and engagement.

“What’s really important for the public to understand is that there isn’t one single change or one single act that’s going to solve all of our safety issues,” adds McCrimmon-Jones. “All of these things working together, coming together and stakeholders coming out of their silos (will) ensure our collisions are as low as we can possibly get them.”

The Vision Zero video is the first of three planned videos to eventually set a foundational message of the City’s goals and concept. Strategists say changing the types of driving behaviours is a priority of the campaign, with Mayor Berry Vrbanovic even noting in a news release that, “we all have a role to play in making our streets safe for our communities.”

Part of the Vision Zero strategy also involves community engagement and so the City invites Kitchener residents to share their driving and street safety tips through comments, photos or videos on the City’s Engage Kitchener page.

“That’s all about hearing from people,” says McCrimmon-Jones. “It is a two-way discussion — through education, we can push information out to residents and through engagement, they can help teach us and engage with us about what they would like to see through the Vision Zero strategy.”

For more information on the Vision Zero strategy, visit: www.kitchener.ca/visionzero