Vision Zero New Britain
City of New Britain’s Vision Zero Task Force & Team
Vision Zero New Britain
In the spring of 2024, the City of New Britain began its Vision Zero journey, and its adoption of a Safe System’s approach to its transportation network. Vision Zero New Britain involves the City setting a goal of eliminating serious injuries and fatalities on the City’s roadways, and taking significant steps to make this goal a reality. Working with the City’s Vision Zero Task Force, the initial step involves the City developing a Safety Action Plan. This webpage contains information related the City’s Vision Zero efforts and related information.
New Britain Vision Zero Task Force
The City’s Vision Zero Task Force was established to provide leadership for the City’s Vision Zero initiative and Safety Action Plan. Task Force members were selected to because they represent a wide-range of stakeholders and perspective related to Vision Zero and it’s guiding principles. Task Force members include:
- Erin E Stewart, Mayor
- Mark Moriarty, Director of Public Works
- Jerrell Hargraves – City’s Human Rights & Opportunities Officer
- Brock Weber, Mayor’s Deputy Chief of Staff
- Carl Gandza, Traffic Operations Manager
- Lisa Kawecki, Athletic Director, NB Board of Education
- Captain John Prisavage, NBPD Professional Standards
- Sgt. Adam Capowski, NBPD Traffic Bureau
- Mark Hoffman, Bike New Britain
- June O’Leary, Disabilities Service Advocate
- Iris Sanchez, NB City Council, Assistant Majority Leader
- Sharon Beloin-Saavedra, NB City Council, Assistant Minority Leader
- Nate Simpson, NB City Council
- Alden Russell, NB City Council
Reporting Road Safety Issues
If you have any suggestions where a road safety issue exists in the City, please report them using our
Complete Streets Roadmap Public Comment Tool
Vision Zero
Vision Zero is an evidence-based strategy used to eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe injuries, while increasing safe, healthy, equitable mobility for all. The overarching goal of Vision Zero is to reduce traffic fatalities to zero by treating them as preventable. While often referred to a “accidents”, the reality is that many crashes that resulted in serious injuries and fatalities could have been prevented. For this reason Vision Zero uses the term “crash” rather than “accident”.
The foundation of many Vision Zero plans focuses on the five E's: engineering, education, encouragement, evaluation, and enforcement to help make our roads safer and user behavior. Vision Zero recognizes that people will sometimes make mistakes, so the road system and related policies should be designed to ensure those inevitable mistakes do not result in severe injuries or fatalities.
Vision Zero was first adopted in Sweden in the 1990’s and expanded throughout Europe after it was shown reduce traffic deaths by as much as 50%. In recent years Vision Zero and its policies and practices have been put in place across the United States
Safe Systems Approach
If Vision Zero is our goal, then the Safe System approach is how people achieve that goals. The Safe System approach – sometimes referred to as Safety by Design – has long been used in the fields of aviation, shipping, rail transport and occupational health and follows several guiding principles.
1. Death and Serious Injuries are Unacceptable
2. Humans Make Mistakes
People will inevitably make mistakes and decisions that can lead or contribute to crashes, but the transportation system can be designed and operated to accommodate certain types and levels of human mistakes, and avoid death and serious injuries when a crash occurs.3. Humans Are Vulnerable
Human bodies have physical limits for tolerating crash forces before death or serious injury occurs; therefore, it is critical to design and operate a transportation system that is human-centric and accommodates physical human vulnerabilities.4. Responsibility is Shared
All stakeholders—including government at all levels, industry, non-profit/advocacy, researchers, and the general public—are vital to preventing fatalities and serious injuries on our roadways.5. Safety is Proactive
Proactive tools should be used to identify and address safety issues in the transportation system, rather than waiting for crashes to occur and reacting afterwards.6. Redundancy is Crucial
Reducing the risk of severe crash outcomes requires all parts of the system to be strengthened, so that if one element fails, the others still protect road users.