Emergency Streets is a rapid, visible response to fatal traffic crashes. Within 48 hours, cities install temporary traffic-calming tools—using speed humps , bollards, 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 an opportunity to instill change about how crashes are addressed and to uncover root causes. The message is clear: preventable deaths demand meaningful 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.
Except: we have no crash prevention hotline. There's no NARCAN for traffic deaths. There is no race for a vaccine. Emergency Streets aims to overcome governmental inertia about addressing traffic crashes, empowering new roles and responsibilities for all parties affected.
Emergency Streets recasts traffic violence as not an inevitable series of isolated events, but rather as an ongoing public health crisis to be treated systemically, starting with reduced kinetic energy as a core aim. Emergency Streets empowers public officials to act, not lament.