Can NY Mayor De Blasio reduce traffic fatalities with Vision Zero?

New York’s new Mayor, Bill De Blasio ran on a promise to adopt the ideas of “Vision Zero,” a Swedish initiative to end traffic deaths with smarter street engineering and policy solutions. A massive clock showing deaths to date is part of the plan to build public awareness. I doubt that he’s expecting to end traffic deaths, but reducing them substantially would be a worthwhile thing to do.

Do you think government works to do this? Can public policy and civil engineering attack a problem like traffic fatalities? By this time next year, we should know whether it did any good. What’s your bet?