Curry County, NM
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Curry County's Safe Streets For All (SS4A) Plan
In developing this Action Plan, Curry County examined previous efforts aimed at improving traffic safety and understanding the community’s needs and desires. Past planning initiatives and studies offer valuable insights into the ongoing traffic safety challenges the county faces, as well as the community’s aspirations for improvements. These insights encompass strategies and policies already implemented regarding traffic safety. Key documents that were reviewed include the Curry County Comprehensive Plan Update, the Five-Year Road Plan (Appendix 1), various grant applications, and the Market Demand, Financial, and Feasibility & Impact Study for the Community Recreation and Sports Complex.
Introduction
From 2020 to 2023, Curry County (excluding state and federal highways and the City of Clovis) experienced 471 road crashes, including 10 fatal crashes and 150 injury-related incidents. Each of these deaths and injuries has had a devastating impact on the community. Led by the Curry County Road Department, efforts involve contributions from the Curry County Sheriff’s Department, local fire departments, and representatives from Grady, Melrose, and Texico. Together, they are committed to preventing such tragedies from occurring in the future.
This action plan lays out the strategy and project priority for how Curry County and its cities and villages will advance this Vision Zero goal and achieve zero traffic-related deaths or injuries by 2036. The Action Plan and recommendations herein are based on wide-ranging data analysis and input from the community.
Police reports filed with the New Mexico Department of Transportation (NMDOT) were used to compile the information on vehicular incidents on roads within the jurisdiction of Curry County.
Community and stakeholder input was gathered through listening sessions, surveys, interviews, and meetings. This input from community members highlighted other areas of safety concerns that are not reflected in the crash data provided by the NMDOT.
Recent demographic research reveals that traffic safety equity—concerns about how traffic incidents disproportionately affect various socioeconomic groups—is not as pressing an issue in Curry County as in metropolitan areas, where the entire area is predominantly rural. Instead, this is a unique opportunity to focus resources on enhancing overall traffic safety in a community where the impacts are more uniformly experienced.
During the Action Plan development process, areas where people feel unsafe while traveling throughout Curry County, the places that see the most crashes or “near misses”, and the user behaviors that contribute to safety issues for drivers and pedestrians were identified.
What is Vision Zero
Vision Zero is a bold approach to changing the way we, as a community, view transportation safety.
History - The Vision Zero comprehensive transportation-safety philosophy was first implemented in Sweden in the 1990s. Those efforts sought to evolve beyond disjointed, reactive responses to transportation-related deaths to implement a goals-based, multi-disciplinary approach, shifting the focus from individual incidents to system-wide improvement.
Through Sweden’s Vision Zero efforts, transportation-related deaths in the country have been reduced by half, making it one of the safest places in the world to travel. Now Vision Zero safety programs are gaining traction across the world, with dramatic results.
The Vision Zero Safety Program has the following Core Principles
1. Traffic deaths and injuries are preventable.
2. Human life and health are prioritized within all aspects of transportation systems.
3. Human error is inevitable, and transportation systems should be forgiving.
4. Safety work should focus on systems-level change above influencing individual behavior.
5. Speed is recognized as the fundamental factor in crash severity.
The design and management of our roads and streets reflects our beliefs about safety, and rights and responsibilities as travelers. During the 20th century, we built our transportation systems based on the belief that crashes are accidents – events no one can fully prevent or predict. Vision Zero is a traffic safety philosophy that lays out a new set of principles for engineering roads, educating travelers, and creating a sense of collective responsibility for ourselves and our fellow travelers. Its central belief is simple: no one should be killed or severely injured by traffic crashes.
You can take the Vision Zero Pledge here!