Number of people and number of persons per 100,000 residents who are killed or sustain serious injuries in traffic crashes
Status
Vision Zero is our community's goal to achieve zero traffic-related fatalities (K) or serious injuries (A). Every data point here represents a family member, a friend, a neighbor - real progress on this measure means fewer people in our community experiencing life-changing incidents which are mostly avoidable with improved engineering design as the lead strategy, along with enhanced traffic safety policies, more targeted traffic safety enforcement, and improved driver behavior.
Trending
The data from 2022 show a 4% increase in serious injuries and 2% increase in fatalities on our roadways compared to 2021. We continue to see roadway activity and drivers’ behaviors return to more ‘normal’ levels than compared to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Unfortunately, this continued upward trend was seen statewide in Texas, as well as in most states in the U.S. With Austin’s rising population over the past five years, the metric of 64 KAs per 100,000 is still lower than the prior high year of 2019, and is in line with 2017 data.
Note:
to see the underlying data for this chart, please select the "View Source
Data" link to the left.
Additional Measure Insights
In
August 2020, the Austin Transportation Department released Vision Zero Viewer,
which allows people to view crash data by month, year, transportation mode,
demographic groups impacted, time of day, and geographic location. Visit Vision
Zero Viewer here.
Throughout 2022, Austin Transportation continued to make investments in engineering treatments and changes to operations to make high priority crash locations safer, and the early results at those locations are promising. This demonstrates that some parts of our roadway network had high increases in the past two years which more than offset the reductions we saw at locations where we implemented treatments. Find out
more at austintexas.gov/visionzero.
While local investments are showing significant reductions at specific locations, we continue to see high percentages of fatalities and serious injuries on freeways, frontage roads, and major arterials. Vision Zero continues to work towards zero as the only acceptable number for this performance measure.
Measure Details and Definition
1) Definition: Vision Zero is a strategy to end traffic fatalities and severe injuries, while increasing safe, healthy, and equitable mobility for all. This measure tracks how many persons per 100,000 residents are killed or sustain serious injuries in traffic crashes.
2) Calculation method: The number per 100,000 residents who are killed or seriously injured in traffic crashes was calculated for each year separately by using the following formula:
((k + a) /p)*100,000
where
k = number of people killed
a= number of people seriously injured
p = population of the City
The population of the City for those years was sourced from Austin Area Population Histories and Forecasts.
3) Data Collection Process: The original data is sourced from Texas Department of Transportation's CRIS database and is supplemented with staff analysis from the Austin Transportation Department. This Vision Zero dataset includes official crash reports (CR3s) only for crashes occurring within the City of Austin, regardless of the public safety jurisdiction who responded to the crash. ATD’s database is continuously updated, so reports run at different times may produce different results. Fatalities are derived from original CRIS data and may update without notice. Serious injuries that resulted in a fatality at a later time may not be reflected in the results. Crashes in this dataset are based on having a reported person involved in the crash. Some crashes that are considered a hit-and-run with no person will not be included. Crash numbers may change between January and June of each year as the Austin Transportation Department reviews and refines Vision Zero crash data that comes from the State of Texas.
4) Measure Target Calculation: The data was calculated using the past five years’ worth of data, from 2018 through 2022. The goal of the Vision Zero program is zero fatalities and serious injuries, and without systemic changes driving down the numbers dramatically, we will note that we are off-track towards the goal of zero.
5) Frequency Measure is Reported: Annually (Calendar Year)
Date page was last updated: May 2023