Quick Take
After losing his 19-year-old friend in a crash — and surviving one himself — local activist Kevin Norton argues that traffic deaths aren’t accidents, but the result of street design prioritizing cars over people. In Santa Cruz County, deaths and serious injuries happen every two days, yet real safety fixes like protected bike lanes crawl forward. Santa Cruz County has the deadliest streets for cycling in the state, according to the California Office of Traffic Safety. The uncomfortable truth, writes Norton, is that saving lives will be inconvenient for drivers, will remove parking and anger some. But he believes protecting feelings matters less than protecting lives. He calls on both elected leaders and the community to move faster on Vision Zero.
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When my friend Shane died in 2007, the phone call came out of nowhere.
One moment, it was an ordinary day in central Florida. The next, three young people were gone.
A crash. Crumpled vehicles. Sirens. Horrified onlookers. My friends and I would never again crowd onto the same couch or ride our bikes into town or make dumb jokes in the same way.
It felt like a bomb had gone off in our lives. I grew up next door to Shane and we had known each other since elementary school.
He was 19.
Some people unfairly blamed Shane. Looking back, I still feel hurt about how they conveniently blamed him – a teenage driver. His choices.
Anyone but the road itself.
Anyone but the system that put a bunch of teenagers on a collision course and called it normal.
A year later, I was in a serious crash myself. I survived, but the aftermath stayed with me. The tightness in my chest every time brakes screeched. The creeping realization that driving, something we treat as routine, is one of the most dangerous things most of us do every day.
That’s when I started seeing our streets differently.
I realized that traffic deaths aren’t random. They’re designed.
Our roads are not designed to be safe for the large number of cyclists and pedestrians we have in our community. That’s not an accident. That’s American car culture.
The U.S. has a far higher traffic mortality rate than 28 other wealthy nations, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Every day, an estimated eight teens die and hundreds are injured on American roads.
Here in Santa Cruz County, between 2014 and 2023, at least 224 people were killed and 1,456 seriously injured due to traffic violence.
The California Highway Patrol defines a “suspected serious injury” as an injury resulting in severe lacerations, broken bones, crush injuries, unconsciousness at the scene, paralysis and any other injury resulting in possible severe internal injury or significant blood loss. On average, someone was killed or seriously injured in a crash about every other day, according to the Santa Cruz County Community Traffic Safety Coalition.
Every other day.
This isn’t just bad luck. Santa Cruz County consistently ranks among the most dangerous counties in California for people who walk and bike.
In 2023, the California Office of Traffic Safety ranked our roads as the most dangerous in the state for cyclists, based on crash numbers, county population and vehicle miles traveled. Watsonville ranked fourth worst for pedestrian crashes, while Capitola ranked first for pedestrian crashes involving older adults and second for bike deaths.
According to data set SafeTREC, Santa Cruz County ranks among the highest in California for serious bicyclist injuries per 100,000 population. We were second for serious cyclist injuries per capita in 2023, and first for 2022.
The toll continues. In 2024, 17 people were killed and 1,386 were injured on our roads.
This is happening in a place with perfect weather for walking and biking, but very few fully protected bike lanes and inadequate infrastructure for pedestrians.
We can change this.
Other places have figured it out. Other areas’ crash rates are lower than ours because they’ve slowed down traffic in dangerous areas, and used quick-build methods to roll out protected bike lanes and pedestrian safety improvements at a much faster rate than we have.
It’s not that we lack technology or money. It’s because we’re not serious yet about Vision Zero, the commitment to eliminate traffic deaths and serious injuries entirely.
Luckily, four of the five jurisdictions in Santa Cruz County have adopted Vision Zero policies or resolutions: Watsonville (2018), Santa Cruz (2019), unincorporated county (2022) and Scotts Valley (2022). We are just struggling to implement them.
Vision Zero asserts that no loss of life on our streets is acceptable. But despite our enthusiasm for the idea, motor vehicle deaths increased in Santa Cruz County from 2020 to 2022.
So, we have a long way to go.
Driver education and bike safety programs are not nearly as effective as we think they are. Policy documents like active transportation plans don’t save anyone. Concrete does. Barriers do. Protected bike lanes do. Slower streets do.
Right now, we’re moving at a glacial pace.
Yes, there are some good projects in the pipeline: Soquel Drive improvements, the Coastal Rail Trail, Freedom Boulevard in Watsonville, the Bay Street corridor in Santa Cruz, 41st Avenue Corridor Plan, protected bike lanes on Scotts Valley Drive, pedestrian improvements in Boulder Creek and Ben Lomond. These matter. But they are taking too long to implement, cost too much, generally don’t subdue the most dangerous streets, and don’t come anywhere close to building a network of protected bike lanes.
Watsonville city councilmembers recently cast doubt on proposed safety improvements on Freedom Boulevard. That would be a mistake. Between 2019 and 2023, there were 109 collisions, with nine resulting in death or serious injury on that road.
Consider it akin to an epidemic of gun violence in disadvantaged communities, with motor vehicles substituted for bullets. Traffic violence disproportionately kills and maims people of low incomes, according to the Community Traffic Safety Coalition. Call them accidents, but the result is the same for the victims.
We’ve built a deadly street in Watsonville and called it “Freedom” Boulevard. What kind of freedom are we talking about?
Capitola still doesn’t have a Vision Zero policy.
At the current rate, it will probably take at least 30 or 40 years to reach Vision Zero in Santa Cruz County — maybe longer.
How many more people will suffer traumatic injuries while we wait 40 more years?
How many more funerals will we attend?
How many more parents will get that phone call?
Stumbling blocks
Yes, some people are going to get upset when we create more safety infrastructure.
Protected bike lanes take up space, and often that means removing parking. Often it means narrowing car lanes. It definitely means changing high-risk corridors such as Mission Street, Highways 1, 17 and 9, Soquel Avenue, Ocean Street, Mount Hermon Road in Scotts Valley, Freedom Boulevard and Main Street in Watsonville.
Sometimes it means drivers will move more slowly. Caltrans is lowering speed limits on Highway 9, and this could be done on many other streets.
People will complain. That’s OK.
In our cities, the slightest inconvenience to drivers is treated as a crisis, while the deaths of pedestrians and cyclists are treated as background noise.
What are we protecting? A parking spot? A trip that is 30 seconds faster?
Or a human life?
The biggest barrier to safer streets in Santa Cruz County is political fear. The fear of angry emails and packed council chambers.
Other communities show what happens when leaders push past fear and act fast. Instead of waiting a decade, they build quick, protected bike lanes with paint and posts — sometimes in just a few months — then listen, tweak and improve. Many times, volunteers help build these lanes and keep them clean. In Seville, Spain (with a population of 700,000), the city rolled out roughly 50 miles of protected bike lanes in just 18 months. Denver (population 729,019) rapidly built 125 miles of bikeways in two years after a series of cyclist fatalities. And Hoboken, New Jersey (population 60,000), used quick-build bike lanes and traffic-calming measures to dramatic effect: nine years without a single traffic fatality.
Once protected bike lanes are in, people realize the sky didn’t fall. Traffic still moves, and is actually mitigated when people start taking more trips by bikes. In some cases, protected bike lanes cause a 430% increase in bike commuters.
Businesses hold steady or improve. Tourists get out of their cars more, spending extra money. Kids ride to school. Older adults cross with confidence. Motorists are safer, too. Slower, calmer streets are good for everyone.
We don’t need perfection. We don’t need to negotiate every project. We need to take action.
Because every statistic is someone like Shane. Someone funny. Someone creative. Someone loved. A brother. A daughter. A best friend.
Someone who should still be here.
It takes courageous leaders. It also takes us — showing up, speaking out, organizing and making safety the easy political choice. You can start by sending a quick email to local leaders here.
We can build streets that protect everyone. Every life is worth protecting — your child, my friend, the stranger crossing tomorrow.
Every single one.
Kevin Norton lives on the Westside of Santa Cruz and is a community organizer for Pacific for People. If you are interested in collaborating to advocate for a network of protected bike lanes and safer pedestrian infrastructure, you can email him at healthysantacruz@gmail.com.