The thing about our ground transportation system (buses, cars, trucks) is it kills a hundred people every day, give or take. Hard to believe we take that for granted and accept it must be that way. Imagine gathering a group of top engineers and asking them to design from the ground up a new, state-of-the art transportation system. The engineers go away and do their work and come back very excited about their new proposal. During the presentation they reluctantly acknowledge their new system would cause, on average, 100 fatalities every day. We would be outraged. Apoplectic. Engineers, we’d say, how about zero deaths per day? Can we start with that as a requirement? Go back to your drawing boards and start over.
And yet this is what we have today. It’s like Hunger Games for a modern society. A lottery that claims across the country 100 lives every day in exchange for the ability to use a really great transportation system that benefits us in so many ways.
But it need not be this way. Vision Zero is a world-wide idea whose time is way past due. You can help zero traffic deaths become a reality by throwing your support behind the Oak Park’s Vision Zero initiative (https://engageoakpark.com/visionzero). Check out the website, add your name to the mailing list, and then contact village trustees to indicate your support.
Karl Lauger
Oak Park