McLeod County TZD contributing to safer roads

McLeod County Towards Zero Deaths (TZD), a safe roads coalition with a mission to decrease traffic related injuries and fatalities, gave a presentation to county commissioners at a county board meeting on Nov. 20. The partnership is between the Minnesota Departments of Public Safety, Transportation and Health and the University of Minnesota, along with other stakeholders.
TZD’s statewide goal for Minnesota is to achieve less than 300 fatalities and 850 serious injuries on Minnesota roads by 2020.
The presentation highlighted the coalition’s key accomplishments since TZD’s launch in 2013: a 45 percent reduction in the number of traffic deaths, a statewide seat belt use rate of 92 percent, and the implementation of low-cost, high-benefit strategies for intersection and lane departure crashes on state and local roads, among other accomplishments.
A two-page report handed out at the board meeting read, “Minnesota TZD works to create a culture in which traffic deaths and serious injuries are no longer acceptable through integrated application of the ‘4Es’: education, enforcement, engineering and emergency medical and trauma services.”
Working to give drivers the education they need to stay safe on the roads is becoming more important according to Public Health Educator Kerry Ward, also a representative for the TZD program. Avoiding hazardous driving practices in the technological age has posed new problems since Henry Ford archetyped affordable vehicles in 1908 -- which didn’t even have a radio until 1930.

(For the complete story, see the Nov. 28 print edition of The Chronicle.)