Philadelphia launches dashboard to track efforts to reduce traffic deaths

Philly Stat 360 and the City’s Vision Zero program recently launched a new Vision Zero dashboard, showing how the City of Philadelphia is working to reduce traffic deaths across the city.

In Philadelphia, 80 percent of traffic deaths and serious injuries occurred on just 12 percent of streets, according to PennDOT data. Known as the “High Injury Network,” these roads are the focus of Vision Zero’s strategic efforts to reduce crashes, injuries, and fatalities.

According to the 2024 Vision Zero Annual Report, traffic deaths most impact pedestrians and cyclists. The recently published report highlights that preliminary fatal crash data for 2024 is lower than 2023, but still above pre-2020 levels.

The trend continues that since 2020, severe crashes are more likely to result in death – with 29 percent of severe crashes resulting in death in 2023, as compared to 17 percent of crashes in 2019.

The post-2020 increase in traffic deaths has most impacted pedestrians and cyclists. As compared to the 2015-2019 average, deaths among people in a vehicle increased by 29 percent, while deaths among people walking and rolling increased by 65 percent.

Vision Zero — a collaborative initiative led by the City’s Office of Transportation and Infrastructure Systems and the Office of Multimodal Planning — is working to eliminate traffic deaths in Philadelphia by 2030. The program has implemented a “Safe System” strategy to traffic safety, a holistic approach that focuses on making streets safer for pedestrians, cyclists, and vehicles.

The new Vision Zero dashboard shows the progress of those efforts and includes interactive maps of installed traffic calming devices such as speed cushions and cameras, as well as ongoing projects on the High Injury Network.