The City of Chicago has released a three-year Vision Zero Chicago Action Plan in an effort to reduce roadway crashes and eliminate traffic fatalities and serious injuries in the city by 2026. The action plan calls for side guards and convex mirrors on large fleet trucks.

A dozen city departments and agencies have been working for months with traffic safety stakeholders to develop the Vision Zero Action plan. The plan covers the first three years of the effort, which is based on the principles of the international Vision Zero movement.  It incorporates traffic crash data, identifies the greatest opportunities for change, and establishes the city’s priorities and resources for addressing the challenge.

Under the three year plan, the city will improve 300 intersections to make them safer for pedestrians and improve access and safety at 25 transit stations. It has used crash data to identify 43 high-crash corridors and eight high-crash areas. Police will focus on education and engagement events in these areas.

Vision Zero will also implement policies, training, and technologies that create safer vehicles and safer professional drivers throughout the city, including with drivers in the city’s fleet of vehicles as well as taxi and transportation network provider drivers. 

The city will install side guards and convex mirrors on its large trucks, and it will also propose an ordinance that will require city contractors to make these same safety improvements on their large trucks. New York City has mandated side guards on refuse trucks since 2015. 

To view the full Vision Zero Action plan, click here.