As Seattle pedestrian deaths rise, traffic safety program to get audit

Nearly twice as many pedestrians were killed on Seattle streets last year compared with the year before, prompting a call Thursday for an audit to examine the city's continuing effort to stop all road deaths and injuries before 2030.

The Vision Zero program began in 2015, with millions spent on rethinking the speed and flow of traffic and redesigning walkways and miles of road. But the danger has changed little, with drivers still speeding, and deaths and injuries trending slightly upward over the past decade.

Seattle City Councilmember Rob Saka, who leads a City Council committee focused on transportation, praised the work to save lives by the Seattle Department of Transportation, but said an independent examination of the department's traffic safety work was necessary.

Seattle is prioritizing safety and making one of the most significant long-term investments in safer streets in our city's history," he said Thursday, pointing to the $890 million dedicated to safety in the transportation levy approved by voters in 2024. "The tragic reality remains that too many people are still dying and suffering serious injury on our streets."

While the overall traffic death toll fell between 2024 and 2025 - from 31 to 27 - the number of pedestrians killed on city streets nearly doubled, from 10 to 18.

The audit, which is expected to begin this fall, comes more than three years after SDOT did its own "top-to-bottom" review of the program under former Director Greg Spotts. That review delivered 13 recommendations that included expanding automated traffic enforcement, further reducing speed limits, creating the position of chief transportation safety officer, and quickening the installation of proven safety measures, like traffic signals that allow pedestrians to start crossing a street seconds before drivers.

Saka, however, said the internal review was not enough. The audit, done independently from the department, would evaluate the program's efficiency and effectiveness, and build credibility with the public.

The death and injury figures discussed Thursday speak to a citywide problem and do not assess individual projects. Some road stretches where, say, the number of lanes have been reduced or the speed limit slowed or a crosswalk upgraded may well be safer. But across Seattle, the policy as a whole hasn't driven down the grim statistics.

Saka's request for an audit coincided with SDOT delivering an update on the Vision Zero program at Thursday's Transportation, Waterfront and Seattle Center Committee meeting.

Since the program began more than a decade ago, 2,101 people have been seriously injured on Seattle streets, and 284 killed.

In 2015, the year the city's Vision Zero policy was adopted, 21 people died from crashes involving a motor vehicle on city streets and 143 people were seriously injured. Last year, 27 people died and 219 were seriously injured, according to preliminary numbers from the city.

The lack of progress is in contrast to national and state statistics.

Last year, about 644 people were killed on Washington's roads, down nearly 12% from the year before, according to figures released this month by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Across the U.S., an estimated 36,640 people died from traffic crashes in 2025, down nearly 7% from the year before.

Saka and other council members pressed Venu Nemani, SDOT's chief transportation safety officer, to explain what the city was doing to meet its traffic safety goals, and for ways to speed up safety measures Nemani said were proven to help.

Saka dwelled on traffic enforcement, and said deaths went up as traffic stops declined, a trend seen nationally for which he said he couldn't prove the correlation but it "seems to make sense."

Nemani said enforcement does play a role in traffic safety, but argued the issue was not the responsibility of SDOT, an "engineering department," and told Saka to question the Seattle Police Department.

What might help?

Still, Nemani said automated traffic cameras could be used to slow drivers on major arterial roads - the city's most dangerous thoroughfares - and have proved to work both locally and nationally. Speeding violations drop 64%, on average, around schools in Seattle that have cameras, and total collisions drop by about 70% when the cameras are on, which is based on school start and stop times.

"Safety cameras do have a role to play," Nemani said.

Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck said the community wants to see action, and that "people are desperate for answers: what went wrong?"

Rinck pushed Nemani to front-load the levy spending on the most dangerous streets - Aurora Avenue North and Rainier Avenue South.

Expediting projects on those roads wouldn't be easy, Nemani suggested, saying it "was probably going to take a conversation" within SDOT. The Vision Zero projects, he said, are on a three-year horizon: what can be built this year, what can be designed to be built next year and what plans can begin for design and construction for three years out.

Last year, Vision Zero projects included reconstruction of North 130th Street near the future Pinehurst light rail station, traffic-calming projects in the Rainier Beach and Portage Bay neighborhoods, head-start walk signals at 45 intersections and "no turn on red" restrictions added to 100 intersections.

This year, SDOT is working to improve South Henderson Street, Renton Avenue South and Spring Street, installing a new traffic signal at North 137th Street and Aurora, adding "no turn on red" restrictions at 108 intersections, adding pedestrian crossings on six roads and putting head-start walks at up to 80 intersections. Traffic calming projects will come to 18 arterial roads, including Martin Luther King Jr. Way and Rainier.

Beyond this year, Nemani said many safety projects were in design for South Seattle, "because that is one of the most challenging districts that we have in terms of both the safety needs and the equity priority."

Notably, the city may build a roundabout where Rainier meets Cornell Avenue South, near the southern end of the city, he said, "as people come from Renton into Seattle, and that's the first time we are introducing them to the citywide speed limit of 25 mph."

Nemani, whose 2002 master's thesis at Kansas State University was on roundabouts, said roundabouts have a proven track record of safety and reducing speeds.

"I have had a long history of researching roundabouts and their effectiveness, Nemani said.

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