Walk Metro Vancouver knows that change is hard. But if you are an entire country and you can educate, plan, and change roads to get folks to drive on the other side, can we not make the same case for a great education, speed, and road design model to make walking safer and more convenient?

On September 3, 1967, a nation-wide change occurred in Sweden that you may not have heard about, one that informs how road congestion charges and the Vision Zero philosophy were developed in that country.
On that day fifty years ago, every Swedish driver and cyclist changed from driving on the left side of the road to the right side. As the BBC reports, “the day was officially known as Högertrafikomläggningen (right-hand traffic diversion) or simply Dagen H (H-Day). Its mission was to put Sweden on the same path as the rest of its continental European neighbours, most of which had long followed the global trend to drive cars on the right.”

Using planned logistics and an education campaign,  every city and town had to repaint road markings, replan the locations of bus stops and lights, and reconfigure intersections, bikeways and one direction streets. Cities such as Stockholm, Malmö and Helsingborg used the “right side drive” campaign to increase buses by retiring tram lines, and started the conversation about traffic safety.
Signage had to be changed across Sweden, with the military assisting with that task. To facilitate the signage switch, all traffic except for emergency and essential services was banned. (From 1950 to 1966, fatal road crashes had increased over 100 per cent, to 1,313 in 1966.)
Remarkably, the change to driving on the right side of the road went pretty smoothly.
While “H-Day” was on a Sunday, only minor accidents occurred on the first Monday going back to work, and there were no fatalities.

As the changes caused Swedes to drive a bit more cautiously, traffic deaths decreased by nearly 18 per cent, and injuries were reduced by 11 per cent. “Investment in the planning and logistics” was credited for making the difference, as well as communication initiatives designed to educate the public and get them to comprehend the change.

Billboards, and even milk cartons, carried information on the change. “There was even a theme tune to accompany the switch, reaching number five on the Swedish hit parade.” 
Thirty years later, in 1997, Sweden commenced an international project to work towards Vision Zero, accepting no fatalities on their public roads. The statistics are fascinating — Sweden has one of the lowest road death statistics, with “270 people dying in 2016, compared to 1,313 in 1966, the year before Dagen H.”  

By prioritizing walking, cycling and transit, Sweden is already operating self-driving transit buses in Stockholm and planning for the impact of autonomous vehicles. They are also forecasting a future where few people in Sweden will need to drive at all, with an abundance of active transportation and transit alternatives.
An intensive public process and the exchange of ideas and information is seen as key to this transition to driverless options, increased use of transit, and technological change.
YouTube provides this Universal Newsreel coverage of the 1967 switch to the right side of the road.

If you have been in San Francisco  California in the last few weeks  you have probably seen them-electric scooters are everywhere. And as discussed by a reporter for the New York Times section California Today  in San Francisco “Shared electric scooters are available to reserve and rent by app for as little as $1 a ride. They are billed as a way to “help make transportation better and more environmentally friendly” by one start-up, Bird, which has netted $100 million in venture capital funding.”

The scooters run by three companies appeared after Saint Patrick’s Day  and are leased by unlocking them with a mobile cellphone application. It costs one dollar to unlock the scooter, and fifteen cents a minute to use it. Reporter Mike Issac found that the dockless nature of the scooter means they are parked just about anywhere.  San Francisco was blanketed with scooters in advance of any legislation existing under the city’s transportation code. The city attorney has acted quickly to bring in regulation, but not for the reasons you would think-the City is worried about the stand-up ride share scooters being a “trip hazard”. “The scooters, capable of speeds up to 15 mph, appeared suddenly, and since their arrival, they’ve drawn praise from early users and a flood of complaints from people who don’t like one of the slender two-wheelers’ biggest features: They can be parked anywhere.” 

The scooters have achieved quick action from the City as sidewalks have become “dumping grounds” and the City is ” “examining all of our legal options to protect the more than 1 million people who use San Francisco’s sidewalks every day.” They are piled up when parked, often blocking sidewalks and bikelanes, and are hazards for people with disabilities. Places like Austin Texas and Santa Monica impound scooters left on sidewalks.  San Francisco wants to regulate the scooter sharecompanies and have them obtain operating permits.
Under State law you cannot ride a scooter on a sidewalk, you must wear a helmet and you must be over 18, rules that the local San Francisco police can enforce. But locations for parking the scooter at the start and end of each trip needs to be worked out. As one local stated about the use of sidewalks “We don’t want people using motorized devices on the one safe place to walk.”

Two items from the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (ICBC), the provincial Crown Corporation responsible for driver licensing, registration and primary insurance coverage, came out yesterday.

If you’ve felt that driving in BC was getting a bit more dangerous, you’re right. ICBC has confirmed that, in 2017, there were 350,000 crashes province-wide. Think of that number — that means there were almost 1,000 crashes every day last year. Statistically, this also suggests (conservatively, assuming single-car crashes) that about one in every ten drivers will be involved in a crash this year.

That figure of 350,000 crashes also works out to 40 crashes every hour in the province; overall, this costs ICBC $4.8 billion, or roughly $13 million per day.

This is also $1 billion more than the cost of the proposed 10-lane Massey Bridge (last estimated in the $3.7 billion range).

ICBC released a short statement acknowledging the sad reality — that vehicular crashes have increased by 25 per cent in the past four years. Walk Metro Vancouver has previously written about the ground breaking work of  recently retired Provincial Medical Health Officer, Dr. Perry Kendall, who identified car crashes as a major cause of death in his 2016 report “Where the Rubber Hits the Road”.

In 2011, nearly half of all serious crash injuries were not to people in cars, but to vulnerable road users — those without a steel frame for protection. In terms of fatalities, vulnerable road users were 32 per cent of all mortalities in 2011, increasing to 35 per cent in 2013.

Here’s the other bottom line. In our province, about 300 people are killed each year on the roads, give or take a few dozen. Three factors have been proven to contribute to fatal crashes: speed, driver distraction and impairment (drugs, alcohol), and the built environment (road design and construction).

Two of these factors can be dealt with immediately. Road speed can be addressed by increased enforcement and notification of enforcement, as has effectively been done by the Delta Police Department, within their jurisdiction. Speeds to and from the ferry in Tsawwassen along Highway 17 have been noticeably down since the police blitz. On Vancouver Island, the regional district is asking the Province to install point-to-point speed cameras on the Malahat Highway, a particularly dangerous road.

In the 21st century  speed enforcement by camera should be thought of  as a safety precaution assisting safe travel, instead of a governmental cash grab. That financial inference might be solved by having fines placed into a fund assisting victims of car crashes.

The second factor, driver distraction and impairment, can also be addressed by education, such as the courses delivered by ICBC, enforcement, and stricter penalties for driver distraction. Changes in road design are clearly in the Vision Zero mandate of moving towards a target of no deaths of any road users, and those changes need to be made to ensure that vehicles travel at the posted speed, and not above.

In a province that has universal health care and universal vehicular insurance, it just makes sense to ameliorate the high crash rate and to save road users from serious injuries and death.

It’s time to think of changing road design to drive to posted speeds, and emphasizing driving for safety, not for quick arrival.  The ICBC crash statistics call for a drastic new approach to road safety that begins now.

You have to admire the good folks in Seattle for their approach to making the argument for safe, separated, protected bike lanes.

Last week, in order to encourage the development of a continuous separated bikeway, volunteers came out to create a “people protected bikeway”. And they did a very good job, as documented on Twitter.

This kind of urban ingenuity typically attracts a lot of attention and comment. Price Tags previously reported on the rogue bike lane that appeared on Saskatchewan Drive in Edmonton, as well as the human traffic cones stopping traffic in London.
And what, exactly, did that look like? The police report documents the fact that there were, “males dressed as traffic cones, blocking the road like traffic cones”.Well okay then.

Simply put, when all else fails, enlist your own ingenuity to get your point across. Safer separated bike lanes make cycling easier and more comfortable, and as always, a novel approach to illustrating this simple fact is sure to generate a response.