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2013 Downtown Holiday Pedestrian Safety Campaign wraps up

Share your feedback and ideas for future efforts

Our 5th annual Downtown Holiday Pedestrian Safety campaign is winding down and we’d like to hear from you. Share your ideas and feedback on the campaign by taking this quick survey (it’ll take about 5 minutes).

From mid-November to mid-January, we took to the streets with the message “Drive with care. Walk aware.” The campaign supports the city’s goal of eliminating fatalities and serious injuries on Seattle’s streets by 2030.

During this year’s campaign, we put up posters in 300 businesses throughout downtown and nearby neighborhoods, including translated versions in Chinese and Vietnamese. Our safety elves distributed over 2,500 postcards and light-up wands to people walking and shopping downtown. Maybe you saw our bus ads, advertisement panel around the Westlake holiday tree, or YouTube video.

peds in crosswalk RESIZED

We hosted a fun and festive launch event at Westlake Park, where local band TubaLuba played and Seahawk’s mascot Blitz showed folks how to safely cross the street.

And we partnered with the Seattle Police Department to conduct focused enforcement efforts at high-collision locations throughout downtown and at special holiday events.

We’re happy to report that the four previous years of the campaign saw an average 30% decrease in collisions downtown. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be able to look at collision reports from this season. And later in 2014, we’ll be evaluating the five year effort to see how successful we’ve been in educating the public on downtown pedestrian safety during the holidays.

You can find more info and check out this season’s campaign materials at http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/safehappyholidays.htm.