The City of Portland is cautiously optimistic about fatal traffic crash trends as the transportation bureau reports a “dramatic drop in deaths” over the past two years. As of Monday (12/22), PBOT has recorded 39 traffic deaths, a 32% drop compared with a year ago and a 39% decline compared with the same period in 2023.
Today the Portland Bureau of Transportation said the trend is “encouraging” and that it might have something to do with a decline in excessive speeding — a behavior that spiked during the pandemic.
PBOT is also encouraged because their phalanx of automated enforcement cameras that had been offline since August are coming back. By tomorrow (12/23), 22 of the 39 (or so) cameras in the network are once again enforcing either speed and/or red signal violations. You might recall that back in August PBOT announced they would switch vendors and replace all of their existing cameras with new, more effective models. That switch is complete and now it’s just a matter of getting all the new cameras up and running.
This is good news for road safety advocates and for the City of Portland, who desperately wants to prevent traffic deaths and needs the revenue these citations generate. Enforcement cameras also happen to be a very popular program. Last fall, PBOT and the Portland Police Bureau surveyed around 2,000 Portlanders about the cameras. PBOT says 82% of respondents support using intersection cameras (speed and signal) and 76% support speed cameras as a way to enforce laws. The survey also found that 94% of respondents were aware of the cameras and 71% felt it was a fair way to enforce traffic laws.
Now PBOT hopes these cameras (from NovoaGlobal), along with all the other work they’re doing to make streets safer, will result in fewer people being killed on our roads. “If people continue to travel safely through Dec. 31,” reads a PBOT statement shared today. “Portland appears to be making significant improvement from the pandemic era travel patterns that saw traffic deaths by people in vehicles triple from 9 in 2018 to a high of 32 in 2023.”
In 2024, PBOT counted 57 people killed in traffic crashes, down from a 30-year record high of 69 in 2023. In 2019, the year before the pandemic, 48 people lost their lives in traffic crashes. The average from 2015 to 2019 was 41 deaths.*
Perhaps we are making progress. But it’s far too early to celebrate. For now, please just drive slower! If you do speed, there’s a much better chance you will kill or seriously hurt another person when you collide with them. Or if that fate doesn’t befall you, you might just receive a very expensive photograph in the mail.
*BikePortland’s Fatality Tracker has a higher number because I count deaths that PBOT excludes from their tally due to federal guidelines, such as collisions with TriMet vehicles, suicides, and deaths that happen months after the initial incident.
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I think this is a great thing if data can be managed effectively. I sure hope there’s a way to prevent ice from using this to target and profile vulnerable populations.
Great news and a positive lead into the holiday week! Thanks (as always) for reporting!