Mayor Harry Kim signed a proclamation Friday announcing the county’s commitment to eliminating all traffic deaths and serious injuries on island roads.
In the hope of reducing traffic fatalities on the island to zero, the county will establish a task force in the coming months to develop new traffic safety plans, ranging from traffic enforcement to road repair to education.
The new approach to traffic safety is part of Vision Zero, a road traffic safety project aimed at eliminating traffic deaths.
“There is no acceptable number of traffic deaths,” said Tina Clothier, executive director of PATH Hawaii, a nonprofit dedicated to improving pedestrian and bicycle accessibility around Hawaii County.
Clothier said Vision Zero takes a different approach to traffic safety than traditional models, which accept a certain amount of fatalities and severe injuries as an inevitable fact of any traffic system. Vision Zero, meanwhile, is based around the idea that life and safety should not be compromised.
“We recognize that mistakes will happen,” Clothier said. “The system needs to be designed so those mistakes do not cause fatalities.”
The task force, which will include representatives of county and state agencies, as well as private organizations, will gather crash data from the Hawaii Police Department and first responders to determine which areas are more crash-prone, what can be done to rectify that, and whether other areas have similar characteristics.
One such strategy will include reconsidering speed limits based on the context of the area, Clothier said as an example. While current speed limits are set based on the 85th percentile principle — that is, the speed limit is set at a speed that 85 percent of traffic drives slower than — Vision Zero would implement speed limits on a case-by-case basis, and change them depending on the likelihood of a crash.
Other options for improvements include simple additions such as speed cameras in high-risk areas like school zones, Clothier said.
Michael Yee, director of the Hawaii County Planning Department, said a timeline for when changes can be implemented will be forthcoming after the formation of the task force, but added that simple changes such as adding or removing stop signs could be implemented within the next few months.
Yee said determining which sites are in the most need of changes has yet to be determined, but said he knows anecdotally of several places that are prone to traffic crashes, such as Makaala Street east of Highway 11.
“I was driving through Puna — and I don’t know the name of the road — but on the way down, I saw there was an accident at one intersection, and on the way back, there had been a different accident at the exact same intersection,” Yee said. “So I called the Department of Transportation, and they were like, ‘Oh, it must have been so-and-so road.’”
Clothier said that attitude toward crashes — as an inevitable fact of certain areas — costs a significant amount of money, money that could be better spent preventing accidents rather than reacting to them.
My skeptical mind now looks at task force projects with suspicion.
In the past, many have started with a hopeful pretext.
Pretense follows when some members appointed to the task force lacks qualified expertise, or lacks genuine concern.
General public input can contribute significant observations and suggestions.
After all, their safety is at stake.
IMO, the application of 85 percentile standard in establishing speed limits is faulty.
Many drivers do not drive prudently, yet they are counted.
Data driven decision making is not reliable when empirical data is based on faulty premises.
However, this disadvantage can be mitigated by real people’s input based on field observations.
i hope the Mayor selects the task force team wisely for many perspectives and analyses are needed.
Like his Mauna Kea Peace park Task Force, or his Lava Viewing Task Force? This is yet another way for him to deceive the community into thinking he is doing something. Going into his third year of his term guys, only thing he has done is raise taxes and fees, and he is NOT done yet!
As a fulfillment center, i grade him 50%
Half for his friends and half for the people.
In reality it is 80/20 – 80% for Harry and his cronies.
I was thinking 90/10 at best. 90% for him and his campaign buddies and 10% reserved just in case he missed anyone.
That is laughable! It won’t prevent anything! Drunk driving, on the phone or talking to your co driver while not keeping an eye on the road. Those things won’t change. We already have problems to get around. The Konan’s are real safe drivers because the stop at every traffic light even if it shows the green light and nobody is approaching the crossing.
Harry Kim and his band of cronies would have money to do some of these safety improvements if he didn’t keep trying to raid GET money for other stuff. He’ll end up raising taxes again and wasting it on his buddies.
STOP PENALIZING THE PEOPLE. I can tell you right now that Shipman Estates and the County and State of Hawaii are intentionally liable for all the deaths on Highway 130.
Puna should have had a secondary access to Hilo through a Railroad alignment decades ago. Beach Road as well was blocked off so traffic wouldn’t bother the exclusive beachfront homes of Shipman and family.
Shipman Estates unilaterally decided to close both county access road without public permission and therefore is directly lliable for all senseless deaths because at least a third of the population wouldn’t even be driving on Highway 130 anymore, they would take Railroad or Beach road to Hilo and DOT wouldn’t need to keep wasting money widening it or adding stoplights or roundabouts.
They would be killed at Railroad or Beach road instead because of the speeders and dui’s there?
Give us a few decades and we may get there due to all the cars being self-driving. It sure won’t be from unrealistic task force from a county that already spends more that it can afford, often inefficiently; and is starting well behind your typical locale even in terms of basics like lighting and dividers between the two directions of traffic.
None of that is to say that the county shouldn’t try to fix the worse problem areas as it can. Of course it should. And if it focused on a few targeted, achievable tasks like that it might accomplish something. As to pie in the sky Vision Zero, sounds like an excuse to hold meetings and do nothing.