Durham Vision Zero

Durham Region is working with our partners to create safer roads for pedestrians, cyclists and drivers through the Durham Vision Zero Strategic Road Safety Action Plan. Durham Vision Zero will help ensure that our region remains the best place in Ontario to live, work and raise a family.

When a resident suddenly dies on our roadways, it is not just a traffic inconvenience. The community member we lose—the hockey coach, the teacher, the friendly neighbour who shovels your driveway—has needlessly been denied the right to celebrate their next birthday, to be at their kids’ graduation, to feel the warm summer breeze as they cycle the waterfront. That’s why the guiding principle of Durham Vision Zero is that no loss of life on our roads is acceptable.

Through Durham Vision Zero, Durham Region has purposefully chosen to endorse preventing collisions from happening in the first place, instead of spending money responding to them. By investing in public education, new road safety technologies, increased law enforcement and more—the investment will pay off endlessly for our community, because the cost of saving a life is priceless.

Though research, engagement, data analysis and stakeholder input, Durham Region has identified eight emphasis areas to focus on improving road safety:

To reduce the number of fatal and injury-causing collision on our roads, the Durham Vision Zero Strategic Road Safety Action Plan outlines countermeasures that focus on the eight emphasis areas. Countermeasures are the specific actions that will be taken by Durham Region and its road safety partners. The list of countermeasures is detailed in the plan, and will be strategically implemented over the next five years. Learn more at durham.ca/VisionZero.

What is Vision Zero?

Vision Zero is an approach to road safety thinking that originated in Sweden in 1997, and has been adopted in various forms around the world. It can be summarized in one sentence: no loss of life resulting from a motor vehicle collision is acceptable. The road system needs to keep us moving, and must also be designed to protect us at every turn by preventing collisions from occurring and designing the road network to minimize the consequences of collisions that do occur. With Vision Zero as a guiding principle, safety is prioritized over factors such as cost, speed, delay, level of service, and convenience, factors upon which decisions were traditionally made.