On a typical day in the U.S., a car drives straight into the façade of a 7-Eleven convenience store.

A gentleman named Carl tragically lost his legs in one of these crashes, resulting in a settlement of $91 million. But if you think the driver or their insurance company was the one paying out, you’d be wrong. It was the 7-Eleven corporation who was found liable.

The reason? The company was found negligent, due to its failure to install bollards.

A judge ruled that the company should have anticipated that the building would be someday hit by a car, given the everyday frequency of such crashes.

If a bollard had been placed in front of each parking spot, the car would have hit the bollard, and not Carl’s legs.

Bollards save lives in a way that paint and signage just don’t.

This ruling from 2023 is part of a movement that re-shapes our conceptions of blame in motor vehicle-related deaths.

In the old paradigm, we would have assigned blame to the pedestrian, who was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, or the driver, who mistakenly pressed the gas instead of the brake. Instead, we are now pointing to a systemic failure to create safeguards that prevent tragedy when human error inevitably occurs.

This new paradigm shift has been picking up steam in recent years; its flagship approach, Safe Systems, has now been adopted by the U.S. Department of Transportation. The approach aims to replace the old, largely unsuccessful framework for road safety, by compelling those who design the roads to incorporate more effective safety measures.

The principles of the Safe Systems Approach are:

Deaths and Serious Injuries Are Unacceptable
Humans Make Mistakes
Humans Are Vulnerable
Responsibility Is Shared
Safety is Proactive
Redundancy is Crucial

The City of Kingston recently endorsed the Safe Systems Approach and pledged to reduce roadway fatalities and serious injuries by 2030. However, the city declined to set a measurable goal for reaching zero fatalities. In the past four years, there have been four cyclists and one pedestrian killed on the streets of Kingston.

Passing a law committing to the Safe Systems Approach was the easy part — now comes the challenge of implementing it. Following best practices will require courageously challenging the status quo in government, in our community and within ourselves. But little by little, we will be rewarded with a mobility culture that we can truly take pride in.

In a future article, I will explain what measures are the most effective in improving street safety. Spoiler alert: The most effective measures are often the least likely to be used by local governments. (But that could change!)

For more of Sweeten the Streets, visit Ella Kondrat's Substack here.