Some headlines suggest that Vision Zero is falling short in the U.S., but a deeper look tells a different story. Across the country — from Austin to Columbus to Orlando to Milwaukee — on-the-ground results show that wherever communities invest in meaningful Safe Systems changes, they enjoy measurable safety gains.

Many communities have reduced traffic deaths and severe injuries since they began implementing Vision Zero changes: Orlando reduced traffic fatalities by nearly 40 percent between 2020 and 2024. Hoboken has gone eight consecutive years without a traffic death. New York City reduced pedestrian deaths by 45 percent and overall traffic deaths by 12 percent between 2013 and 2023. And the “20 Is Plenty” campaign in Madison, Wisc. has helped cut traffic deaths citywide by more than half. 

In many other places, including in some Vision Zero cities, the number of people killed on the roads remains stubbornly high. This mirrors the dismal national trends that worsened during the pandemic. And it also reflects factors (mostly) outside of locals’ direct control, such as the rising size and weight of vehicles and a built environment and policies that are painfully slow to modernize, especially at state and federal levels.

As the Vision Zero Network marks its 10-year anniversary, we’ve learned that focusing only on the citywide story to measure success misses valuable lessons. 

Local data from around the country show a clear pattern: We know what works to improve safety on our streets, but we’re just not doing it fully enough yet. Recent examples in Vision Zero cities include:

• Milwaukee reduced cashes by 15 percent, injury crashes by 7 percent, and “life-changing injury crashes” by 28 percent across the city where they invested in Vision Zero improvements completed in 2023. Specifics include adding a speed hump on a street and successfully reducing excessive speeding from 30 percent to 2 percent; and adding a two-way protected bike lane and traffic calming measures on another street, resulting in a reduction of speeding from 20 percent to 3 percent. 
• Austin has reduced serious and fatal crashes by 86 percent at sites where the city invested in traffic-calmed improvements, by 15 percent on arterials where the speed limit was lowered, and by 42 percent where officials added protected intersections. Austin’s 10-Year Vision Zero Report shares many more successes, including saving hundreds of millions of dollars annually thanks to road safety investments.
• Montgomery County (Maryland) launched 127 safety projects on its High Injury Network in 2024, including new bikeways, sidewalks and pedestrian hybrid beacons and traffic signals – reducing  serious and fatal crashes by 28 percent.
• Philadelphia reduced fatal and serious injury crashes by 34 percent and the severity of injury crashes by 20 percent in locations where they made significant safety changes, compared to High Injury Network trends. And Philadelphia’s addition of speed safety cameras on its most dangerous road has led to 50 percent fewer traffic deaths, 36 percent fewer crashes, and a 90 percent reduction in excessive speeding.
• Columbus transformed a six-lane street to a two-lane street with a protected bike lane in each direction, resulting in a 50-percent reduction in crashes and 89 percent-reduction in excessive speeding. 
• San Francisco reduced speeding by an average of 72 percent in locations where speed cameras were added earlier this year. 
• Orlando cut nighttime crashes by 34 percent thanks to enhanced street lighting at high-crash roadway segments, compared to a 8-percent reduction citywide.
• Portland, Oregon reduced top-end speeding by 72 percent by converting some travel lanes to center turn lanes with pedestrian islands, and by 94 percent on four corridors after adding speed safety cameras.
• Washington, D.C. added new protected bike lanes and peak-hour bus lanes on one corridor, reducing roadway crashes by 32 percent and crashes involving pedestrians by 100 percent, while increasing bicycle traffic by 340 percent. On another corridor, the addition of a two-way, physically separated bikeway on a wide travel lane reduced injury crashes by 60 percent and pedestrian injury crashes by 86 percent, and increased bike traffic by 183 percent.
• Cleveland reduced average speeds by nearly 8 mph on streets where it added speed tables.

Even modest-seeming changes, such as this Cleveland example, matter: Research shows that reducing average speeds as little as 1 mph is associated with a 5-percent reduction in crashes.

Most of the projects listed above aren’t making flashy headlines. For the most part, they’re unsexy, low-cost improvements — adding speed humps, lowering speed limits, improving street lighting — and they show that we know what works to improve road safety and to save lives. The challenge now is to scale up what works and to prioritize safety in design and policy decisions as the rule, not the exception. 

Too often, Vision Zero progress is limited by a community taking a piecemeal approach to change, slowed further by fragmented state and local coordination and a lack of political will if any public pushback surfaces. But the lesson from hundreds of examples in communities across the country is clear: When you invest in proven Safe System solutions, your communities are safer. Now, imagine if they were to scale these investments citywide.

Austin City Manager T.C. Broadnax sums it up well in the city’s 10-year Vision Zero report:

The headwinds we face in getting to zero are many: an inherited built environment that historically prioritized speed over safety, uncertainty in federal policies and funding and the rising size and weight of vehicles on our roads, to name a few. Yet even amid these challenges, we have seen real, measurable progress.

Austin’s report acknowledges that its citywide Vision Zero goal is still far off but doesn’t give up on the work; instead, they focus on what is working to improve safety and commit to doing more. The report highlights 29 major intersection upgrades since 2016 (when the city adopted Vision Zero) and thousands of smaller improvements — new sidewalk connections, signal timing adjustments, and better lighting. Broadnax continues: 

“These may seem minor, but to the people who rely on them, they make a world of difference.”

Don’t let skeptics write off Vision Zero as ineffective without taking a closer look at whether and where your community is investing in meaningful change. Too many places pass a Vision Zero commitment and develop a plan without following through with action. They pretend a few years of lofty words and meager changes can reverse a century of prioritizing speed over safety. Don’t let them get away with it.

This is not the time to retreat. It’s time to double down on what’s working, learning from other cities’ experiences. This also means developing policies to address the dangers of rising vehicle size and weight, and pressuring state-level leaders to get on board with today’s priorities of safety over speed.

We can learn from successful, societal shifts that many thought were impossible, such as dramatically reducing smoking rates, which is credited with saving more than 8 million lives in the U.S. in the past 50+ years. 

Challenging? Yes. Achievable? Yes. Worthwhile? Undeniably.