Reckless driving has quickly become a defining issue in Milwaukee. It’s hard to find anyone who hasn’t been impacted by it — whether it’s a near accident, a crash or the death of a loved one. It’s an issue impacting every part of the city and local leaders have been trying to address the problem in a more comprehensive way that tackles both reckless driving and its causes.
Vision Zero is a plan that seeks to end all reckless driving deaths during the next decades. Steve O’Connell is the chair of the Sherman Park Reckless Driving Committee, which has signed onto Vision Zero.
The impact of reckless driving is significant, O'Connell says. His block association has been working on this issue for six years now. It started, he says, with a conversation about the number of car crashes O'Connell and his neighbors had been involved in and ways to hold community leaders accountable.
O'Connell and his neighbors began to do, what they call, informational picketing. "We would be out there with signage trying to calm the traffic." It wasn't long before the group became official and members began meeting regularly to combat the rise of reckless driving.
"The committee is made up of residents, DOT representatives, city representatives, DPW representatives and the police officers. We meet once a month, and we've been talking for about a year now. We're finally making some progress. Out of that, I joined the Coalition for Safe Driving MKE and I've been with them for two years now, and that's the whole impetus behind Vision Zero comes from," says O'Connell.
From curb bump-outs to engaging the community in safe driving discussions to offering driver's education in schools, Vision Zero has an engineering component as well as an educational component.
"The concept of Vision Zero is to bring down the crashes, to bring down the reckless driving fatalities and to bring down life altering injuries within 10 years to zero," he says.
