Whether your community has 1,000 residents or 1 million and whether it's urban or rural, you’re likely facing more traffic safety challenges than you have staff, funding or capacity to address. No community has unlimited time or resources, so it’s critical to be strategic about how to stretch limited resources — whether that’s funding, staffing, or political support — to build and scale Vision Zero efforts in ways that yield the most impact.
In our recent webinar, Prioritizing Vision Zero Efforts for Greatest Impact, we explore ways communities can take a more holistic approach to identifying problem areas and appropriate solutions, building buy-in for change and promote opportunities for agencies to better coordinate safety improvements with other infrastructure work. Check out the webinar recording and read our summary below, which includes examples from newer Vision Zero communities, such as Nashville, Omaha and El Paso, as well as Austin and Seattle, which have more years of experience and lessons learned on how to prioritize most effectively.
(see 45-minute recording and slidedeck from April 30, 2025)
Strategies for a Safe System-Based Prioritization Approach
An important aspect of using a Safe System approach to road safety is for communities to evolve beyond addressing problems in a one-off, reactionary way after the fact, and toward a more proactive approach that identifies and prevents problems before they happen. This takes time, leadership and willingness to make change – but it’s worthwhile. Here’s an overview:
Overview of how communities can evolve (starting from the left) to a Safe System-based approach in their Vision Zero prioritization process.
Build a Strong Base with a High Injury Network: A High Injury Network (HIN) maps where the highest numbers of roadway deaths and severe injuries are occurring over time. Note the focus on both fatalities and serious crashes, as both are important to identify risk factors. Unlike traditional approaches that simply map all crashes — regardless of severity — the HIN enables a more strategic allocation of resources, as opposed to a “whack-a-mole” approach of responding to individual crashes without addressing the most dangerous systemic risks.
High Injury Networks from left to right: Tampa, FL; Tacoma, WA; and Omaha, NE
Identify and Layer Demographic Data: In addition to traffic injury and crash data, a holistic prioritization process draws on a broad range of data sources. Because traffic violence disproportionately impacts certain segments of the population — including children, seniors, people living in low-income areas, active and public transportation users, people with disabilities and communities of color — additional data can help agencies understand the relationship between road safety and other socioeconomic factors that impact community well-being. And more often than not, communities will find there to be substantial overlap between their High Injury Network (HIN) and areas with vulnerable populations.
While recent federal funding requirements may restrict how equity — particularly racial equity — can be considered in federal funding applications and project selection, there are still opportunities to center those experiencing disproportionate safety risk in planning. Specifically, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (USDOT) Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) Notice of Funding Opportunity emphasizes “underserved communities,” including areas of persistent poverty. The SS4A program also encourages applicants to utilize the SS4A Underserved Communities Tool to help determine whether they are fully, partially, or not at all located within such communities. Check out our new SS4A blog for more updates and tips on how communities can take advantage of this year’s round of funding.
Las Vegas provides a strong example of how layering multiple data sources can reveal deeper insights into road safety risks. By overlaying its High Injury Network (HIN) with areas identified as communities of concern — including low-income neighborhoods, people with disabilities, seniors, individuals with limited English proficiency, and communities of color — the City found a stark disparity: although these communities overlap with just 33% of the street network, they account for 58% of the severe and fatal crash street network.
Las Vegas layered data about communities of concern (highlighted in red colored areas), showing these communities are over-represented in the city’s HIN.
Supplement Quantitative Data with Community Input: Police crash data are usually the go-to for road safety planning, but this data does not tell the whole story. For instance, communities of color are disproportionately impacted by traffic violence in the U.S., but traffic injuries among Black and Hispanic people remain underreported (despite having higher hospital admission rates than white people). To bridge this gap, communities can incorporate what’s known as community data—evidence generated by community members about their everyday lives. The benefits of gathering community data go beyond broadening your dataset and can build greater trust and confidence in a Vision Zero program.
Include All Roadways in the High Injury Network: State-owned (and often county-owned) roads are more likely to be high-speed, high-volume arterials and are more likely to run through communities already experiencing disproportionate safety risk. Explicitly analyzing which parts of the HIN are not owned by the agency leading Vision Zero is an opportunity to encourage action from other important stakeholders to fund and coordinate on safety improvements.
For example, El Paso mapped their high crash intersections and cross referenced them with state-owned roads and found that 40% of the most severe crashes in El Paso occur on state roadways. Unfortunately, this is common as national estimates show that more than half of fatal crashes in urban areas occurred on roads managed by states. So don’t skip analyzing and addressing all the problematic roads in your community, regardless of who owns them.
High Injury Network Map showing high crashes on TxDOT roads
Moving From Reactive to Proactive Actions
Using all of the tools highlighted — including a High Injury Network (HIN) and community input and layered, non-transportation data sources — you can begin identifying patterns in severe and fatal crashes and take proactive steps to address them. For instance, rather than limiting fixes to known hot spots, a proactive approach is to analyze the underlying risk factors—such as design features —and identify where else in your community similar conditions exist, even if crashes haven’t yet occurred there. For example, New York City’s study of left-turn crashes revealed that people walking and biking were three times more likely to be seriously injured or killed by left-turning vehicles than right-turning ones. In response, the city piloted design interventions to calm turns, reduce crash angles, and improve visibility. Once the treatments proved effective, NYC began scaling them citywide at all intersections with similar high-risk designs—before crashes happened. This kind of proactive, systemic approach can be adjusted and adapted to communities of any size.
Seattle demonstrates a strong example of this kind of proactive shift. In 2018, the city piloted a speed limit reduction project that showed that lowering the posted speed limits could decrease injuries by 20%. Based on these results, Seattle proactively lowered posted speed limits across the city. Likewise, when data revealed that 20% of serious and fatal pedestrian collisions occurred at traffic signals, the city didn’t address signals one by one as crashes happened. Instead, drawing on national research showing that Leading Pedestrian Intervals (LPIs) could reduce serious pedestrian crashes by 35%, Seattle began proactively installing LPIs as a standard part of routine signal retiming. This approach reflects a smart use of limited staff, time, and resources: if a solution works in problem areas, don’t wait — scale it up across locations with similar risk factors. Proactively addressing patterns lets cities get ahead of crashes, rather than playing catch-up hotspot by hotspot.
Two graphs showing how Seattle scaled up speed limit changes and LPIs - shifting from reactive to proactive
Whether you're just beginning to map your HIN starting to scale safety interventions or you have a strong foundation of data and are now looking to fill gaps, each step is a move toward a more holistic, proactive, and preventative approach. Advancing Vision Zero is ultimately about making consistent progress, no matter the starting point.