In 2018, the Cleveland City Council adopted an emergency resolution, which aimed to eliminate traffic fatalities in the city. This initiative is part of a larger network called “Vision Zero,” which aims to eliminate all traffic fatalities. Since its beginning in Sweden, the program has spread around the world, being adopted in more than 70 cities in the U.S. alone.
Many of the practices advocated by Vision Zero are legitimate. They include traffic calming measures like traffic circles and constricting roads near intersections. Here in Cleveland, the city installed its first 100 speed tables and flat-topped bumps with priority to residential streets exhibiting medium traffic volumes, lowering average speeds by nearly eight mph.
The problem with Vision Zero is not so much in practice as in theory, though. The program revolves around the idea that, in the words of the U.S. Department of Transportation, “zero is the only acceptable number of deaths and [sic] on our highways, roads, and streets.” This is simply false. There must be some number of deaths that is practical because preventing them all would incur costs that are too steep.
This was the favorite example of economist Walter Williams, who wrote numerous times about how the huge numbers of lives lost in traffic accidents could be saved with a five or 15 mph speed limit. “We look at the costs of having a 5 mph speed limit and rightly conclude that saving those 36,000-plus lives are not worth the costs and inconvenience. Most of us find it too callous, when talking about life, to explicitly weigh costs against benefits,” Williams wrote in a column published after his death in 2020. But weigh we must, because if we were to reduce traffic speeds to five mph on every road, huge numbers of productive hours would be lost and, with them, prosperity. If you are rushed to the hospital in need of surgery, but the surgeon is delayed due to traffic, then it hardly seems that a safe road has reduced the number of fatalities to zero. In fact, a 1999 research journal found that the loss of income from eliminating road deaths would result in a net increase of 1,145 deaths per year.
Norwegian ethicist Beate Elvebakk wrote about this rejection of cost-benefit analysis and the other ethical problems of Vision Zero in a report from the Research Council of Norway. She concluded that the focus on eliminating road deaths is intellectually inconsistent. It focuses exclusively on outcomes (reducing traffic deaths) and yet ignores the trade-offs associated with that view. Elvebakk points out that instructing the government to do anything possible to reduce traffic deaths no matter the cost allows the government to act in ways we might not approve of.
“[The “no trade-off” view] means that it is the outcome of our actions, rather than the actions themselves, that are ascribed moral value. Arguably, such a position poses a danger as the position of the authorities in a political system, as undesirable acts can be justified with reference to the moral value of the end,” Elvebakk wrote in her “Ethics and road safety policy.”
Elvebakk also points out that Vision Zero is overwhelmingly concerned with traffic deaths, severe injuries and risks increasing the overall accident rates. “The focus on reducing serious accidents, rather than on reducing the level of risk, implies that more monies are spent on roads that carry more traffic. In practice, this means that roads that carry less traffic will on average become less safe, that is, the road users will take higher risks on lesser used roads,” Elvebakk writes.
In “The Vision Zero Handbook,” a group of scholars attempt to counter this argument by setting up straw man arguments and then burning them down. They dismiss criticisms of the fixation on zero deaths by claiming that “proponents of Vision Zero accept that it cannot immediately be fully implemented.” In other words, they do not actually support the idea they are writing in defense of. In fact, Elvebakk is aware of this as she herself says that “in Sweden, based on Vision Zero, the goal is to reduce the number of fatalities in traffic by 50% in the period 1996-2007. The results so far, however, are not very promising.”
The goal of reducing traffic deaths is, of course, admirable. However, Vision Zero serves as a reminder that blindly pursuing even an admirable solution without regard for costs can be more dangerous than the problem being solved. Vision Zero is catchier than “vision fewer deaths than now,” but a catchy slogan does not justify policy.
Luckily for the traffic planners of Cleveland and the rest of the U.S., there is a way to massively reduce traffic fatalities that is worth the cost. Self-driving cars are the greatest innovation in urban safety since the electric traffic signal—first installed right here on Euclid Avenue. Waymo, the leading autonomous vehicle (AV) company created by Google, claims to reduce serious injuries in crashes by 94% and reduce pedestrian crashes with injuries by 93%. An independent study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that Waymo’s cars get in crashes at a rate 68% lower than the humans they drive alongside. We should, however, take our own advice and look at the costs. It is true that AVs will probably put Uber and taxi drivers out of business and reduce incomes for personal-injury lawyers, but this solution makes transportation cheaper with the savings especially benefiting low-income households.
And yet, even with self-driving cars, accidents will still occur. But we should not let the obsession with the number zero distract us from the very real way in which technology has solved the problem of road safety. If we are serious about traffic safety, we will accept that some number of deaths is unavoidable and welcome in the age of the self-driving car.