Emergency Streets is a rapid, visible response to fatal traffic crashes. Within 48 hours, cities install temporary traffic-calming tools—like speed humps and signs—to slow cars by about 20 mph and signal the road is under investigation. These two-week installations treat crashes as public health emergencies, providing communities opportunity to uncover root causes and instill change about how crashes are addressed. The message is clear: preventable deaths demand real action.
Traffic violence is outstripping local, regional, and federal efforts to reduce injuries and deaths. Despite a renewed awareness of the issue in traffic planning circles, people are being killed on America’s roadways in mounting numbers--about 40,000 people every year—comparable to other public health crises such as gun suicides, drug overdoses, and the height of the AIDS epidemic.
But there's no crash prevention hotline. There's no NARCAN for traffic deaths. There is no race for a vaccine.
Emergency Streets recasts traffic violence as an ongoing public health crisis that can be treated systemically, not as an inevitable series of isolated events. It invites public officials to act, not lament.