Vision Zero New Britain
City of New Britain’s Vision Zero Task Force & Team
City's Vision Zero Goal
On October 31, 2024 the City's Vision Zero Task Force developed a draft Vision Zero Goal which was referred to the City Council, and on December 11, 2024 the Mayor and the New Britain City Council adopted a resolution for the City's Vision Zero Goal to:"To reduce fatal and serious injury crashes by 50% by 2035 to reach Vision Zero by 2045"
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.
Safety Action Plan
The work of the City's Vision Zero Task Force is summarized in our Safety Action Plan, which is a comprehensive plan that strives to eliminate serious injury and fatal crashes. Safety Action Plans involve comprehensive, multi-year crash data analyses to identify crash locations and their contributing factors. They also involve community engagement, collaboration, and community leaders' commitment and goal-setting. The result is a holistic, well-defined strategy that lays out the actions we need to take to move us closer to our goal of eliminating serious- injury and fatal crashes in New Britain.
The Safety Action Plan and individual technical reports can be viewed below:
New Britain Safety Action Plan - Final
NB SAP - Public Engagement Plan
NB SAP - Policy and Process Changes
NB SAP - Strategy and Project Selection
Resolution 36676-Vision Zero New Britain Goal
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
Community Outreach and Engagement
Between our Community Survey and other efforts, the City and our VZ Task Force are working with the community and key stakeholders to understand their concerns and educate them about Vision Zero and the City’s efforts to eliminate serious injuries and fatalities on our roadways. Community events will be posted on this webpage and advertised in advance on multiple forums.
Vision Zero Community Survey
In 2025, the City conducted a Community Survey between January 8th and March 14th. The survey was conducted to gather input from the community that will help make New Britain a safer place to walk, ride, and drive, as well as identify specific problem areas. The survey was available in English, Spanish, and Polish, and we were pleased to receive important input from 508 people, which helped guide the development of the Safety Action Plan. Results for our community survey are available in the link below.
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.