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Do you know how many cyclists and pedestrians were killed in traffic collisions last year in Ottawa? The official numbers are not out yet (in 2018 they were one and eight, respectively). But we know it was too many, because it was more than zero.

I talk about Vision Zero every chance I get. You know why? Because it works.

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Last year in Oslo, Norway’s capital city of 673,000 inhabitants, a single person died in a road accident – after driving a vehicle into a fence.

That’s it. In all of the city, in all of the year, no pedestrian, cyclist, passenger, transit user or driver, except for that unfortunate person in the fence incident, lost their life in traffic.

Read it as many times as needed to absorb the magnitude of what it means. Oh, and in the entire country of 5.3 million, they had 100 road-related deaths in all of 2019, down from 482 in 1985.

Last year in Oslo, Norway’s capital city of 673,000 inhabitants, a single person died in a road accident – after driving a vehicle into a fence.

Norway adopted the philosophy of Vision Zero in 1999. It’s a principle according to which any road-related death or serious injury is considered one too many. It involves designing roads, crosswalks, bus lanes, etc. in the knowledge that people make mistakes, then embedding that knowledge right into the design. That means, for instance, lower speed limits because we know speed greatly affects how seriously a person will be injured in a collision. Vision Zero also bans right turns on red lights anywhere there’s people because we know those too often result in cyclists or pedestrians getting hurt by a motorist who’s only looking left.