The Portland Bureau of Transportation urges the traveling public to slow down and use caution as the holiday travel season presents dark, rainy conditions that make traveling more dangerous.

As part of its Vision Zero effort to eliminate traffic deaths and serious injuries, PBOT will once again offer its Safe Ride Home discounts on taxi, Uber or Lyft rides for New Year's Eve. Drug and alcohol impairment has always been a top contributor of serious crashes. Sixty-nine percent of deadly crashes in Portland between 2017 and 2021 involved alcohol and/or drug impairment. In that same period, 430 people died or suffered life-altering injuries due to impairment. In these crashes, 79% of the drivers were impaired.

During past events, PBOT’s Safe Ride Home program helped over 3,300 Portlanders celebrate responsibly and get home safely.

Everyone needs to remain vigilant and use caution to stay safe on Portland streets. If you are driving, slow down. Slower speeds is proven to reduce crashes and their severity. People who drive slower can stop more quickly to avoid a crash. Driving more slowly also reduces the chance of injury or death when crashes occur. A pedestrian struck by a person driving 40 mph is eight times more likely to die than a pedestrian struck at 20 mph. Nighttime, wide streets, and large vehicles are also top contributing factors to traffic deaths.

“Traffic safety is a shared responsibility, and we all play a role in protecting lives on our streets,” said Priya Dhanapal, Portland’s Public Works Deputy City Administrator. “Our dedicated city teams are working tirelessly on ways to make our streets safer, but we need everyone to take action today. If we slow down while traveling, stay alert, and avoid impaired driving, we can work together to reduce crashes and save lives.”

"PBOT's Safe Ride Home program offers a great reminder to everyone about the need to travel safely this holiday season," Transportation Director Millicent Williams said. "Let's end the year on a hopeful note. Make sure you and your family have a plan to take TriMet, or catch a taxi, Uber, Lyft, on New Year's Eve."

As of Wednesday, Dec. 18, there have been 57 traffic deaths in Portland for the year, compared with 62 at the same time a year ago, an 8% decline. There were six fewer deaths among people driving or riding in a vehicle, accounting for much of the drop.

The people killed in Portland by traffic violence this year are members of the community and are mourned by countless people who feel the loss of loved ones whose lives were tragically cut short. The Federal Highway Administration estimates that the loss of quality of life and socioeconomic impact of each traffic death is about $5.7 million.

PBOT has created a Vision Zero dashboard to maintain transparency about efforts to reduce speeding, improve street design, support people to travel safely, and share citywide traffic summaries. The dashboard is updated monthly with the latest reported serious injury crashes and fatalities.

All traffic fatality data for 2024 are preliminary until at least the spring of 2025. That's because it can take months for traffic investigations to be completed by the Portland Police Bureau and for final tallies to be published by the Oregon Department of Transportation and the federal government.

Portland Police often have a different number of traffic crashes within a year than PBOT. That's because PBOT adheres to the federal definition of a traffic crash, which excludes homicides, suicides, medical events, private property crash sites, and collisions not involving a motor vehicle. It also excludes any crashes were the victim died more than 30 days after the crash, leading to a delay in final figures.

PBOT anticipates publishing a final traffic crash report with preliminary figures for 2024 in the first three months of 2025. The bureau analyzes all deadly and serious injury crashes for all modes – pedestrians, people on bikes, people on motorcycles, and people in motor vehicles. PBOT also analyzes all other crashes involving pedestrians and people on bikes, regardless of severity.

Portland had 69 traffic deaths in 2023, a 30-year high after rising nearly every year since 2018.

Because of the relatively small number of crashes and the variation in the types of traffic crashes, it takes years for trends to emerge.

> Learn how to get $20 off a taxi fare or $10 off an Uber or Lyft ride on New Year's Eve with to PBOT's Safe Ride Home program.

> Learn how Portland is making streets safer through Vision Zero, by transforming streets, reducing speed limits and adding enforcement.

> Learn about traffic safety projects where PBOT has reduced top end speeding by 67% to 81%.

Source: City of Portland

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