The news has made the rounds since the new year began that Oslo, Norway has hit a remarkable milestone in its push for safe streets. Not a single pedestrian or cyclist was killed on Oslo's streets in 2019. Only one person was killed at all, and it was a driver whose vehicle struck a fence.

This achievement follows decades of steady progress. The idea of Vision Zero, which began in Scandinavia, has fittingly seen a real-life demonstration in Scandinavia.

And yet the usual American response to the whole idea that it's possible to achieve zero road deaths in a year is dismissive laughter. Hands in the air if you’ve heard one of these refrains recently:

"Of course you don’t actually mean zero, right?” “I mean, there will always be accidents!” “There are bad drivers out there! You can’t fix stupid.”

Oslo proves Vision Zero is not a utopian rallying call but something that can be done. It's a question of priorities.

In fact, from a physics standpoint, the whole problem comes down to something very simple. A car that strikes a person while traveling slower than about 15 to 20 miles per hour is very unlikely to kill them. So Vision Zero as a design problem is just this: eliminate all instances where a driver could hit a pedestrian at a speed greater than 15 to 20 mph, even if one or both parties make a mistake.

This means in places where people will be out and about (i.e. streets), cars and trucks must either be kept out entirely, or must not travel faster than 20 miles per hour. Period. The design must be such that even a driver who isn't inclined to be law-abiding won't dare go that fast. Here's what that looks like, in a photo from Oslo: