The adoption of what's called the Safe Systems Approach came at the urging of Councilmember Claudia Balducci, who helped establish similar policies as Bellevue mayor in 2015.
The result could add to what road users are already seeing in the region — slower speed limits, skinnier roads, walk signals that begin a few seconds before a green light — with technological aids like speed cameras and even governors on cars keeping them below a certain speed.
"As humans we are fallible. We're also vulnerable," Balducci said. "(Roads) should be built in a way where mistakes don't lead to death."
The legislation, which will be voted on again by the council on Aug. 20 to fix a small technical error, compels King County Executive Dow Constantine to propose by Jan. 30, 2025 a multi-agency strategy putting the policy in action. The county's Roads Services Division will be part of the strategy, but so will Metro, the Sheriff's Office, Public Health, Parks and Fleet Services.
Before the council's unanimous vote, members heard from Leah Shahum, executive director of the Vision Zero Network; Benito Pérez, policy director of Transportation for America; and Cecelia Black, a local activist with the Disability Mobility Initiative.
All three cited numbers showing the growing danger on the roads, especially for people who aren't behind the wheel.
In King County, 205 pedestrians were killed by motorists between 2013 and 2017. In the five years that followed, 326 people were killed, an increase of 121.
This increase is part of a broader trend. Statistics released in May by the Washington Traffic Safety Commission showed that 810 people were killed statewide in crashes involving a motor vehicle in 2023, a 33-year high. That's up from 743 in 2022, and nearly double from 2014, when 462 people were killed in traffic.
King County recorded the most dead, with 167 people killed in traffic, up from 151 in 2022 and more than double the fatalities in 2014, which had 83.
Pérez, who is based in Washington, D.C., said the deaths are a result of roads that prioritize speed over safety.
"You cannot (have both speed and safety). That's a recipe for a fatal consequence," Pérez said. "Who are we designing our transportation system for? Is it for vehicles or is it for people?"
Shahum, from San Francisco, said the "traditional" way to ensure safe roads leaned on personal responsibility: trusting one another to follow the speed limit, drive sober and watch out for pedestrians.
"The traditional approach really has focused on human behavior," she said. "We don't want to stop educating people, of course. ... But the reality is we have, unfortunately, streets, vehicles and systems that are not necessarily as safe as they should be."
In her presentation, Shahum praised the benefits of intelligent speed assistance, technology that ranges from notifying drivers when they go over the speed limit to actually preventing vehicles from speeding.
In November 2023, the council unanimously voted to accept a feasibility report on intelligent speed assistance, and proposed using the technology on the county fleet of more than 2,000 vehicles, which has not been done.
This week, Balducci said the fleet should be used to test the technology, which "could then be used elsewhere."
Currently, the technology is being tested on 300 public vehicles in New York City, including 50 school buses. The pilot program has found that 99% of the miles driven were below or at the speed limit, and there were fewer "hard braking events." The city plans to expand the program to 1,700 more vehicles, using $2.4 million in federal grant funding.
According to the U. S Department of Transportation's Volpe National Transportation Systems Center, there are three types of intelligent speed assistance: active, passive and speed limiters, which are also called governors.
Active assistance doesn't allow drivers to exceed the speed limit. This is the technology being tested in New York City.
Passive assistance notifies drivers when they're speeding, either through haptics, visual warnings or noises, but allows them to continue at whatever pace they choose. As of April, the European Union requires all new vehicles to be outfitted with passive intelligent speed assistance.
Finally, speed limiters are more often found on vehicles like electric scooters, including the Lime or Bird scooters scattered around the Seattle area. In February, as part of the Steer Act, the D.C. Council created a program to install speed governors in the vehicles of people convicted of speeding who would otherwise lose their license.
The technology is still a ways off for King County. At Tuesday's meeting, Balducci asked the county's fleet director, Chauntelle Hellner, to look into applying for the same federal grant New York City will use to expand its pilot program, called the Safe Streets and Roads For All grant.
Hellner said she would.
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