"Legislative advocacy to address environmental and urban design factors that impact pedestrian safety. Pediatricians can work with local, state, or federal lawmakers to do the following..." (1/)
"a. Encourage support for #CompleteStreets policies and #VisionZero.
b. Support legislation to reduce speed limits in urban areas, including areawide #20mph zones, and to permit photo #SpeedLimit enforcement in critical areas, including school zones.
c. Develop legislation to encourage or require adoption of safety technology, such as pedestrian detection systems and automatic braking in new vehicles." #AAP (2/)
"Advocacy: As community experts in child and adolescent health, pediatricians can do the following, placing special priority on high-risk communities and minority populations:
a. Lobby for safer and healthier pedestrian environments through engineering and design approaches in the local community." #AAP (3/)
"b. Support, or introduce and promote, community-level #VisionZero interventions."
c. Support, or introduce and promote, #SafeRoutesToSchool interventions.
d. Promote safe and #ActiveTransport, including #walking, as an alternative to motorized conveyance, to reduce vehicular #traffic and increase demand for pedestrian amenities." #AAP (4/)
"e. Advocate for #pedestrian#infrastructure when communities consider how to repurpose urban space and #roadway lanes that are freed up by a reduced demand for parking as autonomous vehicles become more prevalent [me: hugely important fight & complicated policy issues here].
f. Lobby for areawide #20mph zones in residential or commercial districts to reduce #pedestrian injury risk and improve #walkability." #AAP (5/)
"g. Support research to further understand and test interventions for pedestrian education for children and their caregivers.
h. Support the development of more robust surveillance systems to collect exposure data for pediatric pedestrians and identify high-risk locations for pediatric pedestrian injury." #AAP (6/)
they also include 'anticipatory guidance,' which undermines their good stuff above a little IMO because it gets a little victim-blamey/shared-responsbility/blah-blah, so I'm not pasting it here.
Just focus on the first two sets of recommendations - on legislative adocacy and regular advocacy. Looks like a pretty solid list to me, and I'm excited to see this new wave of public health professionals enlisting in #TheWarOnCars!
@DrTCombs Interesting list, and all necessary / important things, but apart from automatic braking, I didn’t spot any reference to changing vehicle design so collision with pedestrians are less harmful. E.g. lower hoods, automatic speed regulation to keep within speed limits. Much easier and quicker to effect than many of those infrastructure changes, already happening in Europe. #CarBrain
@ixtility Agreed - I was glad to see a hint of recognition that vehicles can be made safer, but sad to see nothing about the desperate need to regulate physical design -- especially given how much more vulnerable kids are to new designs than adults.
I liked this description of Vision Zero from.the statement:
"Vision Zero is built on the premise that traffic injuries are a public health problem in which human error is assumed and accepted, and solutions are created with that assumption at the foundation. This effort has shifted the focus away from individual behavior and toward systemwide change created with human error in mind."
I didn't like the focus on camera and sensors, however, rather that vehicle weight and height.
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