Question
Where does traffic hurt people, and whom?
Few roads, most of the harm
In Montevideo, the main roads defined in the land-use plan are 18% of the kilometers and account for 67% of people seriously injured or killed. In Bogotá, 60 km/h roads record 16.24 fatal crashes a year per 100 km, almost seven times as many as 30 km/h roads. On Cancún’s Kukulcán Boulevard, five 500 m segments, 10% of the boulevard, account for 32% of the victims; in Guadalupe, three avenues account for one in five.
The motorcycle
In Montevideo, people on motorcycles are 50% of the injured and 61% of those seriously injured or killed. In Cancún’s Hotel Zone, motorcycle crashes are 22% of the total but account for 49% of the victims and 6 of the 10 deaths. In both cases, the motorcycle weighs far more in serious casualties than in the number of crashes or injured people.
Those on foot
In Montevideo, pedestrians are 14% of the people injured and 27% of those killed. In Guadalupe, 52 of the 111 people killed were pedestrians, and fatal incidents rose while collisions without injuries fell. In Bogotá, 27 of the 50 crossings with the most pedestrian collisions fall outside the three priority lists, which also weigh the population and services around them: pedestrian collisions need their own list.
A shared agenda
The three regions reach the same conclusion by different paths: serious road harm is a problem of speed on a small, known network, and of vulnerable users. That makes it manageable. A program that works on fast avenues, pedestrian crossings and motorcycles addresses most of the harm with a fraction of the network.