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Press release: Charlotte needs emergency action on deadly streets

CHARLOTTE — Charlotte’s Vision Zero policy makes a clear promise: “Protecting human lives takes priority over all other objectives of the road system.” 

But this year’s outcomes show we are not living that promise.

“If protecting human life is truly the top priority, then we have to stop prioritizing speed over safety. Charlotte keeps losing people, and far too often the streets where they died remain unchanged. That is a decision to accept more deaths,” said Shannon Binns, founder of Sustain Charlotte. 

CDOT’s newly released FY2025 Vision Zero Annual Report shows that while total crashes declined, fatalities and serious injuries increased. The report documents 81 traffic deaths and 111 serious injuries in FY2025. That is not “Vision Zero.” That is a public safety failure happening in plain sight.

The report also makes something else unmistakable: we already know where and why people are being killed and seriously injured.

  • Speeding and improper vehicle operation account for more than 60% of fatal and serious injury crashes.
  • The High Injury Network is only 13% of Charlotte’s streets, yet it accounts for 80% of fatal and serious injury crashes.
  • Crashes involving people walking and biking are only 1.5% of all crashes, but they represent 29% of serious injuries and fatal crashes.

In other words: the city has the data. The city knows the corridors. The city knows the leading risk factors.

And yet, far too often, when someone is killed on a Charlotte street, the street looks exactly the same the next day, and the next month, and the next year — engineered for speed and throughput, not for human survival.

We acknowledge that CDOT has taken steps that matter, including safety projects, speed limit reductions, and new transparency tools like the Vision Zero Dashboard and Crash Data Portal. But incremental improvements are not matching the scale of loss reflected in this report.

We are calling on CDOT, NCDOT, Charlotte City Council, and the NC General Assembly to honor the lives lost — and to honor the city’s own stated principle that protecting human life comes first — by taking immediate, visible, street-level actions that actually reduce speeds and prevent deadly crashes.

That starts with a clear shift in priorities and here are three things the City and NCDOT should do immediately:

  • Rapid safety upgrades on the High Injury Network streets.
  • Implement designs that reduce vehicle speed; changing the speed limit is not enough.
  • A public, time-bound plan: what specific changes are coming, where, and when.

Voters approved a sales tax increase in November that will provide record levels of funding to invest in making our streets safer. Now the question is simple: Will we use that investment to quickly make the changes needed to save lives, or will we keep studying and planning while sons, daughters, mothers, and fathers keep dying?

Sustain Charlotte remains committed to working with the City of Charlotte and NCDOT. But we are done accepting a status quo where “Vision Zero” is a slogan and not a lifesaving operating standard.

Protecting human lives must outrank speed on every street. 

Until that changes, we will continue to lose more than one life to traffic violence every week in 2026, just as we did in 2025. These are preventable deaths. These are not accidents.

About Sustain Charlotte

Sustain Charlotte is a nonprofit organization that is creating a more equitable, connected, and healthy community by inspiring responsible growth and transportation choices. We advance sustainable land use and transportation policies, inform and engage residents, and build partnerships that support a resilient and inclusive Charlotte.