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Reflecting on Charlotte’s 2025 Vision Zero Report and the Path Ahead for FY26

At Sustain Charlotte, we believe that no one should lose their life or suffer a life-altering injury while simply trying to get around our city. That’s the core promise of Vision Zero: the bold, necessary goal of eliminating all traffic fatalities and serious injuries.

Protecting human life must outrank speed on every street. 

The City of Charlotte recently released its FY25 Vision Zero Annual Report, and the results offer a sobering “good news, bad news” reality check for our community. While the Charlotte Department of Transportation (CDOT) is making historic investments, the data shows we are still fighting against decades of design that prioritized fast travel for cars.

The result is that dangerous streets remain largely unchanged, and more people are dying as a result.

The State of Our Streets: Key Takeaways

The report reveals a troubling paradox from the past year (July 2024 – June 2025):

  • Total crashes are down, but severity is up. While overall collisions decreased, traffic fatalities rose by 9% (81 lives lost) and serious injuries increased by 13% (111 people).

  • The “High Injury Network” (HIN) remains lethal. Just 13% of Charlotte’s streets account for a staggering 80% of fatal and serious injury crashes.

  • Vulnerability is disproportionate. Pedestrians and cyclists make up only 1.5% of all crashes but represent 29% of all serious or fatal injuries. Furthermore, Black Charlotteans continue to be overrepresented in these tragedies, making up 34% of the population but 44% of severe crashes.

  • Speed is the leading killer. Speeding and improper vehicle operation accounted for over 60% of fatal and serious injury crashes.

Leading the Charge: Sustain Charlotte’s Seat at the Table

We are proud to share that Meg Fencil, Sustain Charlotte’s Director of Engagement and Impact, serves as the Co-Chair of the Vision Zero Task Force. Through this role, Sustain Charlotte ensures that the voices of residents—especially those who walk, bike, and ride transit—are at the center of policy decisions.

Our long-standing advocacy for Vision Zero focuses on the acknowledgement that humans make mistakes, and our road system must be designed to ensure those mistakes aren’t fatal or life-altering.

CDOT’s Momentum: A Foundation to Build On

In the past year, we’ve seen significant progress in some areas:

  • Record Funding: Voters approved a transportation bond in November 2024, allocating a record $20 million specifically to Vision Zero in 2025 and 2026. An even bigger long-term win came in November 2025 when Mecklenburg County voters approved a new one-cent sales tax. 40% of revenues from this tax will fund road improvements (with the remaining 60% allocated to public transit).

  • Infrastructure Wins: 521 new streetlights were installed, 82 speed limit reductions were implemented (note below that signage alone is not sufficient), and 39 locations received safer crossings.

  • New Tools: The launch of the interactive Vision Zero Dashboard gives the public easier access to crash data.

We’re Failing Our Most Vulnerable Residents: What We Need in 2026

Charlotte was built for speed and car volume for over half a century, and incremental change is no match for the urgency of the loss documented in this report. Our priorities for Fiscal Year 2026 must be bolder, more coordinated, and more rapid:

  1. Aggressively fix the”High Injury Network”: We must prioritize interventions for the most dangerous corridors, moving beyond “low-cost” fixes to fundamental road redesigns (road diets, protected bike lanes, and raised crosswalks). As funding from the recent one-cent sales tax becomes available, the dedicated 40% of revenues for roads must be strategically prioritized to make streets safer.

  2. Effectively lower speed through design and enforcement: We need to continue lowering speed limits on urban roads and advocate for state-level legislative changes that allow for more automated enforcement (like speed cameras) in high-risk zones. To effectively lower the speed at which vehicles travel, changing the posted speed limit alone is not enough; it is only the first step. The actual design of the street, coupled with equitable and consistent enforcement, is proven to reduce speed far more effectively than a speed limit sign alone.

  3. Update the Vision Zero Action Plan, including time-bound goals: We need a refreshed roadmap that aligns more deeply with the Strategic Mobility Plan and embeds the Safe Systems Approach into every single neighborhood project. The update should include time-bound goals for achieving Vision Zero, completing interventions on the High-Injury Network (HIN), and interim targets. It should also incorporate plans to fund and implement best practices that have proven successful in other cities.

  4. Maximize coordination with NCDOT: Many of Charlotte’s major urban roads are actually maintained by the state. We cannot achieve Vision Zero without NCDOT redesigning its roads for safety, too.

Our call for emergency action

Charlotte is at a crossroads. It’s time to stop accepting traffic deaths as the “price of doing business” in a growing city. We must commit to the hard work of redesigning our streets for people. Safety must take precedence in every policy, investment, and enforcement decision.

Read our coordinated statement calling for emergency action to end the needless traffic deaths and suffering that have resulted from the status quo of prioritizing vehicle speed over safety.