County Adds Crash Analysis to Traffic Safety Toolbox
The Strong Towns Crash Analysis Studio was launched with the ambitious goal of replacing a system that seeks to assign blame in fatal crashes with one that seeks to respond to them with design changes that prevent future tragedies. Often, such changes can be done with small budgets and simple tools.
A Studio session for a 2023 fatal crash in Rochester, New York, showed how fine the details that contribute to a deadly outcome can be. The victim, Edgar Santa Cruz, was struck while walking his dog in a crosswalk at a signalized intersection on a typical low-rise city block, and the driver was charged for running a red light resulting in the fatal crash. That could have been the end of it, but local advocates (and Strong Towns members) called for a more careful analysis of the crash, which showed that, even without this unsafe driver, the intersection had design and lighting deficiencies that were likely to contribute to another crash.
Those insights were submitted to the city of Rochester, which is now rebuilding the intersection with high-visibility crosswalks and improved ADA-compliant curb design. The city has also created a checklist of similar safety enhancements to include in all scheduled remilling projects.
Now, Monroe County, which includes Rochester, has added a first-in-state Community Traffic Safety Team with a mandate to solicit citizens’ complaints and concerns and then evaluate them to make specific improvements. The form includes spaces for citizens to report maintenance issues, locations with chronic speeding, and — in a move that Strong Towns hopes will be repeated across North America — “Crash Analysis."
Monroe County says that the multidisciplinary traffic safety team will include “local, state, and federal government partners, as well as non-governmental organizations such as faith-based organizations (FBO), community-based organizations (CBO), non-profit organizations (NPO), public-benefit corporations (i.e., public transportation), hospitals, and other interested stakeholders.”
The team will meet quarterly starting in January 2025 to identify dangerous roadways, sidewalks and intersections by publicly evaluating comments and concerns left by local residents. It will also proactively identify trouble spots before crashes. After analyzing each complaint, the safety team will outline “actionable steps to mitigate traffic hazards for both drivers and pedestrians,” as well as work with stakeholders to identify available state and federal grant programs to fund those steps.
Strong Towns member and Local Conversation leader Cody Donahue testified at the October 25 hearing where the formation of the traffic safety team was announced. Donahue works with a local group called Reconnect Rochester, which advocates for transportation safety and accessibility and maintains an interactive map of deadly crashes in Monroe County. “We are excited about Monroe County's expanded focus on traffic safety that will invite citizens to be part of solutions for street-level issues. Monroe County residents see and experience traffic safety issues every day on our streets, and will appreciate a conduit to report concerns like street design/infrastructure needs and unsafe driver behavior,” said Donahue.
Monroe County legislator Dave Long echoed the importance of citizen involvement: “This initiative is not just about collecting concerns, it's about fostering collaboration between citizens, local authorities, and law enforcement to create safer roads for everyone.”
Click here to learn more about the Crash Analysis Studio and how conducting a session in your town might spark city- or county-wide action and save lives.
Ben Abramson is a Staff Writer at Strong Towns. In his career as a travel journalist with The Washington Post and USA TODAY, Ben has visited many destinations that show how Americans were once world-class at building appealing, prosperous places at a human scale. He has also seen the worst of the suburban development pattern, and joined Strong Towns because of its unique way of framing the problems we can all see and intuit, and focusing on local, achievable solutions. A native of Washington, DC, Ben lives in Venice, Florida; summers in Atlantic Canada; and loves hiking, biking, kayaking, and beachcombing.