City of Kitchener Continues to Implement Vision Zero

January 27, 2022, Kitchener, Ontario

Posted by: Robert Deutschmann, Personal Injury Lawyer

We wrote about Vision Zero earlier this week and in the past, including earlier this week. As a quick recap, Vision Zero is a new way of thinking about creating roadways that are safer for everyone. This movement is based on the idea that until now, roadways have been designed with vehicle efficiency as the first thought. Engineers and planners have planned and built roads that maximize automobile efficiency and any thoughts to pedestrians, cyclists and overall safety have come as secondary concerns.

Vision Zero turns this on its head by approaching road design from the premise that the safety of users shouldn’t be the responsibility of users rather it should be considered at every step of the design concept for roads and cars. 

From the City of Kitchener’s website, we can see they continue to take the Zero Vision challenge seriously. From initially adopting it over 5 years ago, to lowering speed limits to prevent cyclists and pedestrian deaths and injuries by car strikes, to continuing to reduce the harm of potential collisions or human mistakes. 

From the City of Kitchener Website:

About Vision Zero

Vision Zero is a new way of thinking about creating safer roads. Our goal is to reduce traffic fatalities and serious injuries to zero. This concept started in Sweden in 1997 and has become popular around the world.

Here’s how Vision Zero strategies approach road safety:

• focus on reducing fatal and serious injury collisions
• collisions are preventable and no preventable loss of life is acceptable
• human mistakes and errors should be expected and anticipated
• our transportation network should be designed to account for human mistakes and errors
• road safety is a shared responsibility among the people who design, maintain, enforce rules on and use roads and intersections
• changes are reactive to historical collisions

The City of Kitchener has developed a clear strategy for the implementation of Vision Zero and has publicly stated its strategy and committed to public engagement in the process. You can read the whole strategy here but these are the highlights:

Through a Vision Zero strategy, we aim to minimize the risk of traffic-related serious injuries or fatalities in our community.

The strategy includes specific road safety improvement action items under these categories:

• evaluation
• engineering
• enforcement
• education
• engagement

To develop the strategy, staff worked with stakeholders, including:

• residents
• transportation network users (pedestrians, cyclists, drivers)
• Region of Waterloo
• Waterloo Regional Police Services
• Public Health
• Grand River Transit

We look forward to seeing more local municipalities adopt and implement the Vision Zero policies to protect everyone.

If you or a loved one have been injured in a collision with a car you should contact an experienced personal injury lawyer at Deutschmann Law for free advice. We offer the initial consultation for free. We are here to help you protect your future. Don’t face your situation alone.

About Deutschmann Law

Deutschmann Law serves South-Western Ontario with offices in Kitchener-Waterloo, Cambridge, Woodstock, Brantford, Stratford and Ayr. The law practice of Robert Deutschmann focuses almost exclusively in personal injury and disability insurance matters. For more information, please visit www.deutschmannlaw.com or call us at 1-519-742-7774.

It is important that you review your accident benefit file with one of our experienced personal injury / car accident lawyers to ensure that you obtain access to all your benefits which include, but are limited to, things like physiotherapy, income replacement benefits, vocational retraining and home modifications.