What US States Can Learn from Canadian Road Rules

A new study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and Canada's Traffic Injury Research Foundation finds that the U.S. could save thousands of lives by adopting road safety policies more similar to our northern neighbors. Kea Wilson outlines the results of the study in a piece for Streetsblog USA.

Canadian strategies include enforcement tactics such as “restricting handheld cell phone use, passing stricter seat belt laws, and authorizing wider use of automated speed enforcement.”

As Wilson notes, “Of course, enforcement-based solutions alone probably won't get either country to Vision Zero anytime soon — and the model wasn't able to estimate the impact of countless other positive factors up north, like building multimodal infrastructure, encouraging transit use, or driving cars with better safety features for everyone out the road.”

Rebecca Weast, senior research scientist for the Institute, says Canada offers a more effective model for the United States because “both nations take a federalized approach to writing laws that govern motorists' behavior.” However, the study notes that there are cultural differences that are unaccounted for, such as rates of police violence and gun ownership.

“If nothing else, Weast argues that the Canadian policies studied in the report deserve U.S. attention because they're all implemented at the sub-federal level — and that was true even before U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy began openly discouraging states from applying for federal money to install road diets.” By analyzing these policies, U.S. states can learn from Canadian provinces, Wilson writes.