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Please join us for the annual World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims on Sunday, November 20, 2022. This is your chance to remember those lost and injured in crashes and to bring extra urgency to your advocacy for change.

This year’s event is especially timely, as the number of people dying and severely injured in preventable traffic crashes in the U.S. is rising at unacceptable rates. It was just announced that 9,560 people died in roadway crashes in the first quarter of 2022, a 7% increase compared to the same quarter in 2021 – the highest number of first-quarter fatalities since 2002.

Together with Families for Safe Streets, It Could Be Me, and the Roadway to Zero Coalition, Vision Zero Network will join with local advocates, safety organizations, community leaders, elected officials, and others across the country and around the world to REMEMBER those we’ve lost, SUPPORT crash victims and victim families, and ACT for change because everyone deserves to be safe on our roads, sidewalks and bikeways.

Started in 2005, the World Day of Remembrance is an international event, honoring the 1.35 million people killed and the millions more injured on the world’s roads each year. In the U.S., advocates for safe mobility are leveraging this important date to organize for meaningful, lasting change to prevent such tragedies. Our goal of Vision Zero is achievable – read more.

Last year, more than 36 U.S. communities took part in World Day of Remembrance programming – from Washington DC to Wichita, KS. This year, we hope to garner even more participation across the country. Let us know if you want to learn more and are interested in organizing an event. 

Planning for this year’s event

In August, we hosted the first monthly national organizing call to help local communities plan meaningful events. The next one is scheduled for September 13th. You can register for the planning meetings here.

Communities are in the early stages of planning for 2022. Some, such as Houston, are organizing their first WDoR event, while others, such as WDoR veteran Philadelphia, are bringing renewed urgency to their ongoing Vision Zero advocacy. Whether this is your first time participating in WDoR or your fifth, we’re here to help you make it both thoughtful and effective. For some, an event may involve hundreds of people, and for others just a handful. Either way, your efforts can make a difference by bringing much-needed attention to the changes we need to make roads, speeds and vehicles as safe as they should be.

We encourage you to think about how you can leverage the World Day of Remembrance as part of your own campaign strategy for change. Perhaps you want to lower speed limits in your community or gather support for more protected bike lanes and traffic-calming measures or you are urging your mayor to publicly commit to Vision Zero – all of these efforts could be boosted with WDoR actions and attention.

This widely covered international event can be your chance to bring urgency to the policy, legislative, or physical change that you’ve been advocating in your community (big or small). This is a chance to engage other individuals and agencies who support this cause and can serve as allies in your efforts. And this is a way to identify and speak directly to key decision makers who can make change happen.

We know that planning an advocacy event can be intimidating, especially at first. We’re available and excited to help make the process less daunting. A few ways we can support your on-the-ground WDoR efforts:

• Join the monthly WDoR organizing calls to hear tips and lessons learned from others. Next meeting is Sept. 13.
• Access the extensive WDoR organizing toolkit, an online resource w/ recommendations on event planning and advocacy strategies, as well as examples from past events.
• Support developing and carrying out your media strategy, including honing messaging, submitting Op-Eds, and reaching out to reporters.
• Help amplifying your work via shared national messaging and outreach, as well as social media channels.

For more information and joining this network of organizers around the nation participating in World Day of Remembrance 2022, please sign up here.

Tags: World Day of Remembrance

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