SMPD Distracted ?

As long as our local public safety agency continues to speak of "accidents", we assume it is resigned to their recurrence. If you think of collisions as accidents, then you have given up preventing them. You can prevent an collision or a crash, but an accident, well, that comes from nowhere, unforeseen, without reason.

In truth, all the collisions documented in Santa Monica can be explained. They have a reason. And there is a way to prevent them. The belief that we can prevent collisions is called Vision Zero.

Language matters. Yet the daily report of the Santa Monica Police Department speaks about accidents as if nobody ever told them. Yet members of their staff attend the Summits organized by the Office of Traffic Safety (OTS), where the importance of language is consistently in focus. Perhaps 2015 is going to be the year when the term "accident" is disappearing from the language of SMPD.

2015 should also be the year when we are going to see some tried and tested policing methods introduced on the ground.

• Pedestrian Decoy Safety Program, or 'Cops in Crosswalks.'  Educating drivers to respect right of way of pedestrians using plainclothes police officers. Successful precedents here.
• Pedestrian Neighborhood Patrols
• Bicycle Patrols: Bicycle Patrols on busy and residential streets