Feel unsafe when you drive, walk or bike in Wake? These folks want to hear about it
Nearly 12,000 people were injured in car and truck crashes in Wake County last year; 113 of them died, more than twice the number killed in homicides in the county.
To try to reduce those numbers in the future, local and regional transportation planners are looking for ways to make travel safer in Wake and surrounding counties.
Their Blueprint for Safety will use crash data to determine where improvements are needed as well as feedback from the public and experts on possible strategies to reduce speeding, distracted driving and other behaviors that result in accidents.
The project includes a public survey that’s available online through the end of August at publicinput.com/blueprintforsafety. The survey asks people where and under what circumstances they feel unsafe as they drive, walk, cycle or scooter around the region.
The effort is being led by the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization or CAMPO, which does long-term transportation planning for Wake and parts of Chatham, Franklin, Granville, Harnett and Johnston counties. The Blueprint for Safety will apply to those counties as well as Wake.
Local governments and the N.C. Department of Transportation will help craft the plan and carry out many of its recommendations.
Safety is a problem in big towns and small, says Butch Lawter of the Johnston County Board of Commissioners and vice chair of CAMPO’s board.
“From pedestrians crossing streets to speeding and aggressive driving on our roadways — whether they are two lanes or eight-lanes — it feels like safety has been going in the wrong direction,” Lawter said in a statement. “If we can get the community to contribute to the conversation, use data, and combine that with best practices and lessons from other places, we can get things back on the path of saving lives, of having places that are comfortable for every road user — from the biggest of trucks to the smallest of strollers.”
The effort begins with crash data that shows where people have historically been killed or seriously injured in crashes. That kind of work already happens.
Last year, for example, NCDOT installed a new traffic light and crosswalks at the intersection of Country Trail and Pinecrest Road in North Raleigh. City data showed that there had been 13 crashes there over the previous five years, most of them involving drivers pulling out of Country Trail and being T-boned by cars on Pinecrest.
In the year since the light was installed, there have been no T-bone or angle crashes, according to the city.
The Blueprint for Safety and its recommendations will take about a year to complete. For more information, go to www.campo-nc.us/programs-studies/blueprint-for-safety.
This story was originally published August 23, 2024 at 9:49 AM with the headline "Feel unsafe when you drive, walk or bike in Wake? These folks want to hear about it."
