Tag: Target Zero

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How Realistic is Target Zero?

Q: You say the goal of Target Zero is to eliminate all fatal crashes, but that’s not a very realistic goal, is it? Why set an unrealistic goal?

A: Allow me to make the goal even harder. The goal of Target Zero is to eliminate all fatal and serious injury crashes. How’s that for a big reach? Impossible? In the past when I’ve talked with people about Target Zero, I’ve described it as an aspirational goal; something we should always aim for, even if we never quite get there. And on one level that makes sense. If we instead set a goal of reducing traffic fatalities by half we’re sort of accepting that over 18,000 people will still die in crashes in the US. Yep, if you double that, you’ll be close to the 36,560 total traffic fatalities for 2018. Better to aspire to an impossible goal and achieve milestones along the way than to reach an achievable goal and think our work is done. Or so I thought.

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What’s Your Goal?

I’m not sure if this should be called a PSA or a short documentary, but it asks some great questions on this theme: What should our goal be for traffic fatalities? You’ll probably recognize some of the backgrounds; this one comes to us from the folks at the Washington Traffic Safety Commission. Instead of graphic crashes or big budget effects, this short documentary (there, I decided) lets people in our own community answer the questions. It’s about five minutes long, and I might be biased since this comes from our home state, but I think its worth all 309 seconds.