Approved by the Transportation Policy Committee on January 29, 2026
Approved by the Public Policy and Practice Committee on March 20, 2026
Adopted by the Board of Direction on July 21, 2026

Policy

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) supports Vision Zero as a safe system approach to eliminating traffic fatalities and serious injuries for all road users. Vision Zero is based on the tenets that traffic fatalities can be prevented, are unacceptable, and even one traffic-related death is one too many. Vision Zero seeks to build a system to reduce the risk of fatal or serious injuries. 

ASCE supports the following principles as essential to achieving Vision Zero outcomes:

  • Transportation systems should be designed and managed to be safe for all users, even when this requires tradeoffs with mobility, capacity, delay, or cost.
  • Transportation system funding should prioritize self- enforcing designs that reduce reliance on individual behavior for safety. 
  • Enforcement of traffic safety laws should be fully funded at all levels of government. 
  • Transportation agencies should regularly update design manuals and guidance to reflect current safety best practices, remove standards that conflict with safe system principles, and collect and analyze crash, speed, and exposure data to identify safety risks and prioritize the most effective safety investments.
  • Proven safety technologies and programs should be incorporated into transportation planning, design, and construction in a timely manner. 
    Transportation agencies should establish clear safety performance targets, regularly report progress toward eliminating traffic fatalities and serious injuries, and be accountable for safety outcomes across planning, design, operation, and maintenance activities.
  • Transportation systems should be operated and maintained to minimize crash risk under everyday and temporary conditions, including work zones, adverse weather, and asset degradation, consistent with safe system principles. 

Issue

ASCE supports increased and sustained investment in transportation infrastructure to advance Vision Zero through safety-focused modernization of existing facilities and context-sensitive development of new infrastructure. 

Traffic fatalities and serious injuries in the United States remain unacceptably high despite decades of safety programs and the growing adoptions of initiatives such as Vision Zero. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration within the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (DOT), an estimated 39,345 people were killed in motor vehicle traffic crashes on U.S. roadways in 2024. While this represents a decrease of approximately 3.8% from 2023 and marks the first year since 2020 in which fatalities fell below 40,000, traffic deaths remain higher than levels observed a decade earlier. For comparison, 32,893 fatalities were recorded in 2013 and 37,473 in 2017. These trends indicate that incremental improvements have not been sufficient to reverse long-term safety deterioration. 

The burden of traffic fatalities is not evenly distributed across road users. Pedestrians and bicyclists face disproportionate risk due to their limited physical protection and greater exposure to high-speed traffic environments. In 2024, an estimated 7,148 pedestrians were killed, a decline from the prior year but nearly 20% higher than in 2016. Bicyclist fatalities reached a record high of 1,166 in 2023. These patterns reflect systemic safety failures rather than isolated incidents and highlight the limitations of approaches that rely primarily on individual compliance or post-crash interventions.

These persistent safety outcomes have reinforced the need for roadway systems that are resilient to human error. Research and practice increasingly recognize that human mistakes are inevitable, and that roadway systems must be designed and operated to prevent those errors from resulting in fatal or serious injuries. This recognition underpins the safe system approach, which emphasizes the interaction among roadway design, vehicle characteristics, operating speeds, user behavior, and post-crash response. As travel behavior, vehicle technology, and roadway use continue to evolve, engineering and planning practices face growing pressure to adapt standards, operational strategies, and implementation processes to align with this systems-based understanding of safety.

Rationale

Vision Zero aligns directly with the professional obligations of civil engineers to protect public safety through the planning, design, operation, and maintenance of the built environment. ASCE is dedicated to protecting and advancing the health, safety, and welfare of the public through the practice of civil engineering. Persistent traffic fatalities therefore fall squarely within the domain of civil engineering responsibility rather than being external to it.

Vision Zero emerged in Sweden in 1994 and was incorporated into national law three years later, establishing a systems-based approach to traffic safety that has since influenced policy and practice internationally. In the U.S., this framework has been integrated into federal guidance, including traffic safety planning resources developed by the NHTSA, and has been adopted by a growing number of local jurisdictions through the Vision Zero Network. These communities commit to engineering- and planning-led interventions, including redesigning high-injury corridors and managing operating speeds, to reduce the likelihood that inevitable human errors result in fatal or serious injuries. 

Vision Zero rests on the premise that traffic deaths and serious injuries are preventable and therefore unacceptable, elevating safety from one consideration among many to the primary criterion guiding transportation decision-making. This framing aligns with civil engineering ethics and practice by placing responsibility on system design, operation, and management to protect human life rather than on individual perfection. 

ASCE Policy Statement 552
First Approved 2017

The other ASCE policies that relate to Vision Zero are:
Policy Statement 131 - Growth and Development
Policy Statement 299 - Infrastructure Investment
Policy Statement 367 - Highway Safety
Policy Statement 436 - Incorporating Bicycle Facilities Into Transportation Systems
Policy Statement 494 - Public Transportation
Policy Statement 537 - Complete Streets
Policy Statement 548 - Connected and Autonomous Vehicles