Show-Me Zero

Are you from Missouri? Is your hometown Auxvasse, Mound City, or Edina? Did you grow up in Highlandville, Winona, or Sturgeon? There are dozens of towns like these in Missouri that boast populations right around 1,000.
Could you imagine if one of these towns were to suddenly disappear? What if about 1,000 people were just gone? 

Wouldn’t that be something that people talk about? Wouldn’t it make national news? Wouldn’t we try desperately to find out what happened, and then devise a plan to ensure that it never happens again?

In a way, this does happen every single year.

On average, about 1,000 people die on Missouri roads annually. And that’s actually an improvement over previous years. We shouldn’t rest until a problem of this magnitude is solved.

As far as the Missouri Coalition for Roadway Safety is concerned, we won’t.

In the Show-Me Zero plan, you will see a candid view of Missouri’s roadway safety problem. You will see where we intend to focus our efforts based on real-world data. You will find everyday solutions that anyone can do to help alleviate our crash problem. We won’t rest until the number of people whose lives are lost on Missouri roads is zero. 

Highway safety is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. There are simply too many variables, and the nature of crashes is just too random for that to be the case. Realistic solutions need to be comprehensive and redundant. There may be an answer.

Within the past decade, the United States has increasingly embraced a comprehensive approach to highway safety known as the Safe System Approach (SSA). The concept was developed in the 1990s in Sweden and has steadily gained traction globally since then. It is built around people and holds safety as its highest priority.

This approach operates under six philosophical principals:

• Death and Serious Injuries are Unacceptable – There is no number—however small—of crash-related death or serious injury that is acceptable, other than zero.
• Humans Make Mistakes – Whether consciously or without realizing it, every user of the transportation system is capable of making harmful choices. To the extent possible, the system should be able to accommodate these mistakes.
• Humans Are Vulnerable – It doesn’t take a great deal of kinetic energy to injure or kill a human, and the energy released in a vehicle crash usually far exceeds that threshold.
• Responsibility is Shared – Highway safety is not the sole responsibility of any single agency. No organization alone is wholly responsible. Highway safety is influenced by every citizen of Missouri, and there is something that every citizen can do.
• Safety is Proactive – If an agency waits until a tragedy occurs before it addresses safety, then it is too late. The damage is done. Rather, they should analyze data to identify safety risks and effectively apply countermeasures.
• Redundancy is Crucial – Layers of protection should be applied so that if one safety mechanism fails, another can take its place.

These concepts guide the Safe System Approach; five elements make it work.

Almost everyone is a Vulnerable Road User (VRU) at some point in their daily lives. VRUs refer to people using active modes of transportation like walking, operating wheelchairs, bicycling, or scootering. All these people, including you, are especially vulnerable to being killed or seriously injured if they are involved in a traffic crash.  This assessment, completed in November 2025, explores those users of the system and the challenges they face.