Analyzing Crashes Can Be Painful, but Creating Safer Streets Is Worth It
The Strong Towns Crash Analysis Studio is one of the toughest projects I’ve ever worked on.
Over the past two years, Strong Towns has reviewed almost 150 crash nominations and worked with volunteers to conduct 21 Crash Analysis Studios. I have enjoyed working with members of the Strong Towns movement to develop and refine a new way of responding to crashes that moves beyond blame. It has been meaningful to watch how this work has shifted the conversation and led to more action in hundreds of communities.
However, the fundamental purpose of the Studio project is to address the fatalities on our roadways — over 40,000 of them a year. Each of these nominations and Studios represents lives that have been changed forever. Of the 21 studios that Strong Towns helped conduct, there were 19 fatalities.
Each Studio involved the gathering of news stories and eyewitness reports, as well as a thorough, detailed examination of these tragedies. The purpose of these reviews is to understand the contributing factors that helped cause each crash.
Each of these crashes represents the worst day in the lives of at least two families and a community. Everyone impacted is understandably highly emotional. The Studio process requires a little detective work where you have to attempt to understand the conditions of the location of the crash from the perspective of those involved. This means reliving the experience of these fateful events over and over again.
The worst part is the realization of how senseless these tragedies are. In all of these Studios, there was no one thing we could point to and say, "If we could just go back in time and do this one thing, we would have prevented these tragedies."
Each crash, regardless of location and those involved, had layers of contributing factors. These factors resulted in all parties involved making risky decisions, like crossing the street, driving through an intersection or doing one of the mundane mini activities each of us do while traveling through our cities.
I read the news stories and listened to the eyewitness accounts. You could feel the true pain that these crashes inflicted on the communities and families involved. It did not matter how much time had passed since the crash; the emotions and pain had not waned.
For me personally, all of the people involved in these crashes reminded me of my family and friends. Although I personally knew none of the individuals involved in these crashes, I do know people just like them.
As I looked at each of the intersections and roadways where these crashes occurred, I could connect to these places because they looked like my street and the roads that I travel on a regular basis through my community. None of these locations featured one-off conditions or something abnormal. All of these locations followed the standards and practices commonly used by our roadway designers and maintained through the best practices shared by Public Works departments. Although we selected crashes for the Studios that were not on the edge of extreme, these are all too common with the places we all know.
The Crash Analysis Studio is formatted to be clinical, to remove emotion from the discussion, but it is really hard to abandon the most human of emotions. For me personally, each of the studios was an emotional roller coaster — if you listen closely to the recordings, you can hear it in my voice. I was not alone in this experience.
Each Studio began with a somber reminder and moment of silence for the victims of each crash. We took this moment to recognize the gravity of children, parents, grandparents, neighbors and friends who were following the regular pattern of their day, never to return home again.
The most gut-wrenching stomach punch of the Studios was the Carlsbad crash. This horrific crash occurred on a local neighborhood street near a school, where 35-year-old Christine Hawk Embree and her 16-month-old daughter Delilah were traveling on an e-bike when a car failed to stop at the intersection and hit them.
Just a few weeks prior, Christine and her husband were in front of their city council, asking for help to slow traffic and make their neighborhood streets safer. They were advocating for changes to the contributing factors that later led to Christine’s death. This is something that weighed on me heavily throughout that Studio, and it's something that I will carry forever.
The next step in each Studio was to methodically go through the contributing factors of the crash. These discussions are intentionally clinical, describing exactly what occurred and reliving this tragedy through this discussion. For me, each of the Studios revealed something new to me within our built environment that cannot be understood through a manual or set of engineering plans.
For example, several of the Studios included things such as incomplete sidewalks that were seemingly stopped mid-construction, despite a steady stream of walkers. Egregious amounts of signage either communicated conflicting messages, blocked sidewalks or, worse, were installed directly in front of other signs, sacrificing the messaging of the latter ones.
The most painful of Studio discussions occurred where "improvements" or "upgrades" had been made by well-intentioned designers in the name of complete streets or other admirable causes, yet failed to be fully realized or were incorrectly installed. In other words, these are the projects where crosswalks were started but not completed, and the Crash Analysis Studio was the first time anyone had taken the time to actually look at the user experience in the area. One might say that these were the projects built with a long list of good intentions.
Each of these Studios included the friends and families of these victims in the audience. They listened and watched as the panel explored the contributing factors that changed their lives forever. When a senseless tragedy occurs, it is in our human nature to rationalize this trauma. We want to assign blame or understand a cause. As the panel examines a crash, you quickly come to the realization that there is no one person or thing to blame, but there are many, many contributing factors that make our streets dangerous.
After identifying the contributing factors, my emotion always climbs to a level of frustration. Sharing recommendations of what could be done to address these contributing factors helps me cope with these emotions. The panelists have an opportunity to share lots of really good ideas. These are all ideas that can be deployed tomorrow with the resources at hand today. In all of the 21 Studios, there were a minimum of four or five things that a municipality could do tomorrow to address the factors that contributed to these crashes.
None of them were rocket science, none of them required large sums of money, and every single one of these recommended responses could prevent a second person from dying at these locations.
In four of these 21 crashes, the signal timing of the traffic lights meant that it was useless for pedestrians to push the button because the light didn't give them enough time to cross the street. Altering those traffic signals takes a few minutes in front of a computer at a cozy office desk.
In numerous crashes, the roads were just too wide, and the intersections had been eroded to accommodate fast-turning vehicles. Cities could initially begin with paint and delineators to narrow the lanes or tighten the intersections. This is something that I’ve learned from my own experience takes about an afternoon to install and can literally be decided with a meeting in the field. The hardest part is coordinating the schedule of the street designer and the public works director for that meeting.
As each of the Studios concluded, I would become emotionally drained and depressed. As soon as the Zoom meeting was over, I would have to step away from my desk and go for a walk. Each of these Studios exposed how awful the design of these streets really is. Yes, I understood that there was no one cause of the crash and that there were many contributing factors. However, for me, the one thing that connected all of these crashes was the designs of these streets. For me, this is a systemic problem that negatively impacts all of us, yet this is not a broadly understood reality.
The catchphrase “You're Doing It Wrong” comes to my mind following all of these Studios. We have huge room for improvement in how we design and build our roadways. This particularly rang true in the Nice, California, Studio. Throughout the core downtown of Nice, stop signs for cars had been installed within the crosswalks for walkers throughout the town. This is a mistake that should have been caught by the sign installer, identified by the person painting or repainting the crosswalks, by the designers that just installed new bus shelters, or frankly anyone with a pair of eyes. You can see my frustration….
Following several of the Crash Analysis Studios, I received emails and phone calls from individuals who watched the Studio and wanted to learn more about how to implement the shared recommendations. This is a positive outcome because the Studio sparked a shift in the conversation at the local level. I talked to people who care deeply about their community and are ready to take action, especially being inspired by what they could do with paint and cones. These conversations provided me the opportunity to share the work that the Strong Towns Local Conversation did in Portland in 80 minutes, or how cities like Indianapolis are responding to citizen concerns by installing quick-deployment projects resulting in slower speeds and safer streets. Or sharing resources with elected officials like National Association of City Transportation Officials guides with illustrations that they can share with their technical staff and consultants. Or sharing resources with everyday citizens like the Tactical Urbanism Guide, which includes a shopping list of items they can purchase at the hardware store to make a street safer.
I also had memorable calls from technical professionals in these communities who pushed back on the contributing factors and recommendations in the Studio. For example, I received a call from an engineer, challenging the observations of the Crash Analysis Studio. This particular engineer was offended by how the roadway was described in the Studio and felt that it was misrepresented. I don’t know how one can misrepresent a fatality on a local neighborhood street where 93% of drivers were speeding and the 85th percentile of speed was almost 40 mph.
This was not just a one-off occurrence. Our local volunteers also shared the feedback they had received from their respective cities. When these advocates shared the Studio's findings and recommendations, city officials often agreed with them but said that the same problems occurred on many streets in the city and that, if they corrected one street, they would have to fix all the streets. Essentially, the problem was everywhere and city officials did not know where to start.
Each Studio is summarized in a report. These reports are intentionally clinical and do not include glossing images or lofty visions. Each includes the details of the crash, as the panelists understood it, an organized list of contributing factors, and a list of actions that respond to each of the contributing factors. These reports give panelists the opportunity to collect all their thoughts on the crash and to shift their local discussions about car crashes and street safety. They highlight the systemic issues on our streets and demonstrate how simple cautions like a walking audit, cones and paint could address these issues. The reports also mobilize a community to combat apathy and move beyond blame for crashes.
The Crash Analysis Studio is one of the toughest projects I’ve ever worked on because each crash is emotional and a senseless loss. Each of us has been impacted by a crash. However, we are seeing a shift toward a greater awareness that these tragedies are an opportunity to learn. I am seeing this shift, which provides me great hope. The Crash Analysis Studio is an approach that everyday citizens can conduct and a public engagement process that every city can embrace.
Click here to learn more about the Crash Analysis Studio process and how you can make your city’s streets safer, whether you’re a local official, a technical professional or a concerned citizen.
Edward Erfurt is the Director of Community Action at Strong Towns. He is a trained architect and passionate urban designer with over 20 years of public- and private-sector experience focused on the management, design, and successful implementation of development and placemaking projects that enrich the tapestry of place. He believes in community-focused processes that are founded on diverse viewpoints, a concern for equity, and guided through time-tested, traditional town-planning principles and development patterns that result in sustainable growth with the community character embraced by the communities which he serves.