Cities are Making Left Turns Safer with ‘Wedges'

The rate of roadway deaths in Sweden is at an international low due to an approach called Vision Zero. Now the country’s approach faces perhaps its stiffest test: the streets of New York City.

Currently, the District of Columbia and 10 states, including Maryland, issue limited driving licenses to undocumented workers, with two more set to issue such licenses in the coming months.

A second year of decline demonstrates that a project to reduce traffic fatalities works, said a safety advocate, who called on the mayor to expand the effort, termed Vision Zero, which lowers speed limits and raises enforcement.

Clogged with traffic, crippled by poor infrastructure – the capital is notoriously hard to navigate on foot. Enter Peatónito, the activist fighting for safer streets.

As a state with robust populations of wildlife, Montana has had its share of roadkill. Its Department of Transportation developed animal shelving, a type of wildlife crossing, to enable safe passage for small animals who need to cross the road. The measure, combined with other types of crossings, has reduced animal-vehicle collisions by half.

Cities tend to be dangerous and difficult places to live for older residents. A private public partnership in New York is catering to seniors through small changes in the city such as para-transit options and seniors-only hours at public establishments.

Many wildlife are killed each year as they are hit by cars when crossing highways. Montana built crossing structures over high risk sections of highways, such as grass covered tunnels, for animals to cross safely and reduce car accidents.

The overpopulation of white-tailed deer is a conservation realization and an environmental disaster for the communities that harbor them. Hastings-on-Hudson, a progressive community, has opted for a humane birth control method PZP that is injected by darts into does. The method is successful for its non-lethal approach and the population growth has slowed, but as of yet has not significantly decreased.

South Dakota’s “24/7 Sobriety” initiative breathalyzers tens of thousands of people every day in an effort to curb drunk driving. Rather than legislation that takes penalizes offenders by taking away their license, the state addresses the behavioral issue instead. In counties that use the “24/7 Sobriety,” they’ve seen a 12% decrease in repeat drunken-driving arrests.

Traffic fatality rates are slowly climbing in today's world of texting-while-driving. But highway agencies are increasingly using humor and wit to try to get people to drive safer.