AAA Teams
Up with New San José “Street Smarts”
Program to Calm Traffic
San José, CA ---- The
City of San José announced today (12/17/02) that it
will receive a $10,000 donation from AAA of Northern California
in support of the City’s new Street Smarts traffic safety
education program. The San José City Council formally
accepted the contribution from AAA at its meeting earlier
today.
Street Smarts, launched last month by San José
Mayor Ron Gonzales, is a public education campaign aimed toward
raising awareness and changing driver behavior to improve
the safety of city streets. Recent pedestrian fatalities over
the past few weeks speak to the increasing need to do something
beyond engineering and enforcement.
"We are making San José neighborhood streets safer
for our kids to walk to school and for seniors going to the
market," said Mayor Ron Gonzales. "Getting drivers
to just slow down is one of our highest priorities in every
part of our city, and we can do that through public education,
aggressive traffic enforcement, and good traffic engineering."
The Street Smarts public education campaign will target
behaviors of drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists, and will
use both advertising and a focused community relations effort
to bring the messages about the need for behavior change to
neighborhoods, schools and businesses.
"San José is always on the cutting edge of traffic
safety programs, and AAA is very pleased to be working with
them on this innovative new program," said AAA Traffic
Safety Senior Manager Merry Banks. “This effort has
great potential to expand in partnership with other communities
throughout the state to achieve a critical goal that we share
– making our streets safer for everybody to use.”
Specific behaviors that the campaign will address are:
- Speeding
- Red light running
- Stop sign violations
- School zone compliance
- Crosswalk safety & compliance
“Much like housing and transportation planning, solutions
for this kind of community problem must be addressed on a
regional or statewide level to achieve the greatest success,”
said James Helmer, the City’s Transportation Director.
“San José is working with regional partners,
such as the Santa Clara County Traffic Safe Communities Network,
to improve driving, walking and bicycling behaviors throughout
the Bay Area.” In addition to 16 Bay Area cities and
public agencies considering a regional partnership with San
José, the City of Los Angeles also has indicated interest
in working to expand the Street Smarts campaign statewide.
“In order to ensure that children, pedestrians and bicyclists
are safe in our neighborhoods we need solutions that slow
down speeding cars and limit cut through traffic. In addition
to the excellent work being done by San José, our countywide
efforts have successfully reduced red light running violations
up to 60 percent at critical intersections.” stated
County Supervisor Jim Beall, Chairperson of the Santa Clara
County Traffic Safety Communities Network.
To encourage greater regional participation in the Street
Smarts program, the City of San José will be sharing
creative materials developed for this campaign with any public
agency at no cost, enabling other agencies to take advantage
of the initial investment by San José to launch Street
Smarts in their community. This approach is expected to increase
regional participation in the campaign to improve safety on
Bay Area streets, and will better leverage public dollars.
For more information about Street Smarts, visit: www.GetStreetSmarts.org.
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