A Missing Piece in Your Vision Zero Plan: Vehicle Safety

WARNING: Your community’s Vision Zero Plan is likely missing an important component: Improving vehicle safety. But it’s not too late to add (or strengthen) it.

Many people assume that improving vehicle safety is out of locals’ control, but that’s not the case. Local and state agencies can influence the safety of vehicles on their streets in limited but important ways.
This responsibility is more important than ever, as vehicles in the U.S. get bigger, heavier and faster, contributing to increased traffic injuries and fatalities, especially for people outside of cars. A 2022 study by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration found that pedestrians struck by SUVs are twice as likely to die compared to those struck by sedans, even at similar speeds. (Read about the Deadly Rise of Giant Trucks and S.U.Vs.)

Municipalities and states do have important, though often underutilized, authority to improve vehicle safety, starting with their own fleets, which tend to be larger and heavier than the average personal vehicle.

Vision Zero Network wants to help your community fill this gap in your safe mobility efforts, starting with something as simple as including a substantive “Safe Vehicles” section to your Vision Zero plan.

Following are recommendations to activate your efforts to improve vehicle safety, including the following sections:  

• Examples of U.S. communities’ vehicle safety efforts in their Vision Zero planning and actions;
• Safe Vehicles strategies that can be implemented at the local level, such as adding ISA and side and rear guards in fleet vehicles;
• Where to Start

Examples of Local Vehicle Safety Efforts

Good news: We’re not starting from scratch. Communities of all sizes — from small towns to major cities and multi-county regions —   are already incorporating vehicle safety into their Vision Zero plans and ongoing work. Following are examples: 

Mount Rainier, Maryland is a small city with a population of less than 8,000 just outside Washington, D.C. The Safe Vehicles section of its Vision Zero Plan (see p. 28) includes specific actions to advance the City’s goal of zero traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2040, including the following:

• Discourage through truck traffic from using local streets. The City of Mount Rainier will implement measures to discourage large trucks from using local streets in Mount Rainier. Potential measures include an ordinance prohibiting truck traffic beyond a specified weight class, signage to communicate the prohibition, automated enforcement of violators, and physical traffic calming and traffic diversion.The plan also identifies the specific streets where this is most needed.
  
• Require large vehicles owned or operated by or on behalf of the City to be fitted with side-underrun guards to prevent people walking, biking, or driving motorcycles from falling between the wheels of a large vehicle during a collision.
• Purchase safer City vehicles. As existing vehicles wear out or become obsolete, the City will, to the maximum extent possible, replace them with safer vehicles. Attributes that generally contribute to lower crash frequency and severity include lower profile, lighter weight, and a design that enables drivers to easily see pedestrians, cyclists, and other roadway users, even when they are close to the vehicle.
• Encourage use of safer and more sustainable modes, including pedestrian and bicycle travel, transit, and shared micromobility. This includes coordinating with partners to increase the frequency and reliability of public transit service and to install additional bikeshare stations.

Mount Rainier is backing its plan with funding. In December 2023, the City secured a $9.76 million Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) grant — one of the largest awards to a community of its size — to implement its Vision Zero Action Plan. Early projects are already underway, including adding high-visibility crosswalks, traffic-calming measures, and automated speed enforcement, demonstrating how even a small city can translate a Safe Vehicles commitment into funded, phased action.

New York City shows what these commitments look like at volume and stands as a national leader in the Safe Vehicles space. The City’s first Vision Zero Action Plan, released in 2014, prioritized very specific Safe Vehicle actions among its initial 63 specific initiatives, which have been expanded over the years. In that 2014 Plan, these included: 

• Ensure all City fleet vehicles are equipped with technology that record speeding and other dangerous driving behaviors by the end of June 2016; 
• Recommend safety related devices and designs, such as high visibility vehicles, back-up cameras, and rear wheel side guards, for City vehicles and other vehicles under City regulation, among many others;
• Extensive fleet and commercial driver training programs and many other activities; among others.

NYC developed its first focused Safe Fleet Transition Plan in 2017, which formalized a set of best-practice vehicle safety technologies for all City vehicles to prevent and mitigate crashes, in direct support of Vision Zero. In the years since, this has led to such impressive accomplishments, including:

• Launching the largest municipal Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA) program in the country, where ISA-equipped fleet vehicles reduced time speeding more than 11 mph over the limit by 64% 
• Building North America's largest truck side-guard program — side guards are now on all City trucks, and a local law extends the requirement to commercial waste haulers and City contractors, covering more than 7,000 trucks in total.
• Surpassed 100,000 fleet safety upgrades since 2017, including adding automatic emergency braking, surround cameras, backup sensors, pedestrian alerts, lane-departure warnings and other safety features.

Learn more about  NYC’s impressive efforts in its most recent Safe Fleet Transition Plan Update (2025). Other U.S. cities investing in smart Safe Vehicles strategies include Washington, D.C.; Tacoma, WA; Somerville, MA; and the Northwest Ohio region – as highlighted below.

Safe Vehicle Strategies at the Local Level

Vehicle safety feels like a federal matter — and much of it is. But the vehicles on local streets can also be shaped by local policy decisions, including: what vehicles a community buys for its own fleets, how it retrofits existing fleet vehicles with safety features, and what it asks of its contractors with vehicles. 

The following strategies are under local control and should be considered as part of Vision Zero efforts:

Where to Start?

You can start by simply outlining the problem and adding Vehicle Safety strategies within your Vision Zero Action Plan. Consider the following actions:

1. Add or strengthen the vehicle safety section of your Plan
This is a simple step to get this issue more fully on the agenda, including inviting in key stakeholders who may not see themselves as influencing road safety as much as they actually do, such as fleet managers. Think of this as an opportunity to raise awareness and stake out important, achievable, and relatively easy safety strategies.  Start by framing a clear need within a Safe Vehicles section of your road safety plan. As one of the five core elements of the Safe System approach, this deserves attention. Share data explaining that the size, weight, design and speed capacity of motor vehicles directly influences safety outcomes in our communities. Help stakeholders understand the gravity of the challenge.

For example, over the past three decades the average U.S. vehicle has grown about 10 inches longer, 8 inches taller, and 1,000 pounds heavier. Bigger vehicles are far deadlier. At 35 mph, a pedestrian's risk of serious injury is about 52% when struck by a median-height car – but 91% when struck by a median-height pickup.

A strong Vehicle Safety section of your Vision Zero Plan can help stakeholders understand that while many vehicle safety factors fall under federal purview, there are local-level strategies to reduce this risk - including those outlined here. Add language that lays out the problem and names solutions. Examples include the following:

Tacoma, WA's Vision Zero Action Plan names Safe Vehicles as a core element and frames the local role plainly:

"The Tacoma community is supported in using the safest vehicle possible for daily trips – with walking, biking, and transit as the priority. The City of Tacoma will support and encourage motor vehicles to be designed and regulated to minimize the occurrence and severity of collisions, using safety measures that incorporate the latest technology."

San Francisco’s Vision Zero Action Plan states: “Using strong policy and partnerships we are committed to promoting more safe vehicles on our streets. This means encouraging the auto industry to continue building safe vehicles not just for the people driving, but also for those who are most impacted by traffic crashes: people walking and biking.” Its action items include:

“Issue public-facing report of telematics data of city-operated vehicles and use data to improve the safety, efficiency, and reliability of city vehicles, and to promote safe driving” 

and “Encourage fleet managers (e.g. company vehicles, commuter shuttles, car rental, carshare) and transportation services (e.g. transportation network companies) operating in San Francisco to prioritize safety through good vehicle design (i.e. safety features) and other technologies such as driver performance tools/processes to improve collision avoidance and driver accountability” among others.

The Northwest Arkansas Vision Zero Safety Action Plan, includes the following specific action:

“Adopt specifications for incorporating safety features in new fleet vehicle purchases and retrofit existing vehicles”

2. Commit to improving your own fleet
Why focus on fleets? These are vehicles that are usually larger and heavier than average; they are on the roads many hours a day; they usually fall directly within a City’s purview; and safety upgrades are generally inexpensive, non-controversial and effective. Think about all of the types of vehicles that may be in a city’s fleet, including fire trucks, waste vehicles, police cars, ambulances, school buses, dump trucks, snowplows, transit vehicles, cars, trucks, vans, etc. This is dozens, maybe even hundreds or thousands, of opportunities for improved safety on the roads. Consider this low-hanging fruit with big safety benefits.

Safety features include side and rear guards, automatic emergency braking, Intelligent Speed Assistance, telematics features and many others. As an example, retrofitting a truck with side guards runs about $1,800 and can last the life of the vehicle. Most importantly, they save lives by physically stopping people who walk and bike from being swept beneath a truck's wheels in a side collision. Another low-cost, high-value safety feature is Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA), which keeps vehicles from exceeding the posted speed limit - either warning the driver or actively limiting acceleration. Managing speed is one of the most important things a community can do for safety, since speed shapes both whether a crash happens and how deadly it is, especially for larger, heavier vehicles. ISA is a fast-growing best practice that lets a community target speed directly, on vehicles it already controls.

(Check out resources to help guide your work to assess the safety of your fleet, including Vision Zero Network’s Five Steps to Advance Vehicle Safety Locally, developed with Toole Design, and a new ITE document:  Safe for Whom? Vehicles as the Overlooked Variable in Safe System Implementation - Parametrix.) 

Start by getting to know your community’s fleet managers, who are important partners in this work. The people who manage municipal (or State) fleets may not be in the same agency as those focusing most on Vision Zero. In a large city, there may be a dedicated fleet agency; while in smaller communities, fleets may be managed by multi-tasking maintenance teams within a broader public works or operations division. 

Safety features can be added to existing fleet vehicles via retrofits or added as part of a scheduled fleet update, because these vehicles turn over every 5-10 years, and the schedules should be easily identifiable. Cities should update their procurement policies so that modern safety features become standard on fleet vehicle purchases going forward. The town of Sherborn, MA uses a Fleet Replacement Evaluation Tool.

3. Extend requirements to contractors and vendors
Best practices should start with your community's own fleet, but the same standards can reach further. For example, a City may be able to require side guards or ISA on vehicles "owned or operated by, or on behalf of" the government directly, while also extending to contractors too. These can include companies who provide services such as waste collection, maintenance and construction services, those seeking taxi/limousine licenses, delivery services, and others. Somerville, MA's ordinance to Safeguard Vulnerable Road Users shows how: contractors bring their vehicles in for a simple, low-cost inspection and fit them with side guards, blind-spot countermeasures and warning signage, or risk losing the contract. NYC's Safe Fleet Transition Plan lays out similar requirements for both city and private fleets.

4. Acknowledge what you don't control and call on others to act too.
Be honest about the limits locals face in influencing vehicle safety while committing to act where you can. Then, rather than ignoring other vehicle safety strategies beyond your direct control, leverage your Vision Zero commitment to call for action from other stakeholders who can influence other areas.
For instance, federal agencies regulate overall vehicle safety. Those regulations – or, sometimes, the lack thereof – directly impacts local safety efforts. So, if this is a need to improve safety in a community, it should be acknowledged explicitly.

The following language is an example of helping stakeholders see what locals control and what they don’t, while also emphasizing the role others play: 

"While [City XX] does not regulate private vehicle size and weight, we recognize that vehicles in the United States have grown substantially larger and heavier, increasing risk to people outside them…..[City XX] will act where it has authority, including its own fleet, its procurement, and its contractors, to reduce this risk. We also support federal and state actions to improve vehicle safety, including pedestrian-protective design standards and ISA, alongside the steps we are taking locally."

Here’s another example showing the value in states allowing for ISA to be used to curb dangerous super-speeding (more about this growing best practice):

“While [City XX] does not have the legal authority to require Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA) for repeat, dangerous speeders, we recognize the value of this safety strategy and support State action to make ISA available as a tool to address dangerous speeding” 

Start wherever you’re at

The evidence is clear and more unsettling than ever: the vehicles on our roads are getting bigger, heavier, and deadlier, especially for the people outside them. Fortunately, vehicle safety technologies are increasingly available and affordable. The ideas shared here are relatively low-cost, low-risk and do not require waiting on federal or state action.

So, start with whichever strategies best fit your communities’ needs and capacity. This can be as simple as adding it to your new or existing Vision Zero Action Plan, then building from there.