Council unanimously approves bill outlining safety role of Traffic Engineer, tasks departments with drafting rules to require truck side guards for city contractors

From a Federal Highway Administration publication written a few years after passage of Boston's 2014 truck side guard ordinance.

The Seattle City Council unanimously approved two of the three bills in Councilmember Rob Saka's SAFER Streets Act, officially adding the job description of a Chief Safety Officer to the section of city code defining the role of City Traffic Engineer and tasking city departments with developing rules that would require city contractors to install side guards on trucks. Action on a third bill containing many changes including an expansion of SDOT authority over street safety in historic districts has been delayed until at least the Council's November 10 meeting.

Seattle has dedicated traffic engineers," said Transportation Committee Chair Rob Saka before the vote on CB 121297. He said SDOT staff know where dangerous conditions are" and that they have the expertise on how to address them."

This bill essentially codifies a change that former Mayor Bruce Harrell and former SDOT Director Greg Spotts made in 2023 when they added the role of Chief Safety Officer to City Traffic Engineer Venu Nemani's job title and requirements. So it's not clear how this change may change things in the immediate term, but it makes it harder for a future administration to try to distance safety from the City Traffic Engineer's job. Notably, the change means that city code now states that one of the duties of the Traffic Engineer under supervision of the Director of Transportation" is to Direct and expedite, as appropriate, safety improvements including pilot, quick build, low-cost, operational, or other safety treatments on streets with a history of high rates of traffic-related serious injuries and fatalities."

The Council also unanimously approved a bill (CB 121298) that tasks city departments, mainly the Department of Finance and Administrative Services, with studying and developing new safety requirements for city contractors, including mandatory installation of truck side guards as well as various other vehicle specifications including mirrors, cameras and other blind spot visibility and detection devices. The department must create both recommendations and a transition plan and give it to Council by May 1 for further action.

Today's bill does not immediately impose new equipment rules for contractors," said Saka, but the vehicles that help build and serve our city should be part of the conversation about how to make our streets safer."

The policy could be complicated since there are so many different kinds of heavy vehicles with different levels of safety device compatibility. The city would also need to enforce the rules on contractors and sub-contractors. They will be leaning on a similar policy that has been in effect in Boston for about a decade and has hopefully worked through a lot of the specifics.

It is not yet clear if the final version of that bill will face any opposition, but as of now passage was unanimous and went through without significant comment from any other councilmember. Businesses often fight new regulations, but the financial, legal liability and moral case for installing truck side guards voluntarily is already strong. Side guards, or lateral protective devices," are physical panels installed ahead of the rear wheels of a large truck so that in the case of a collision a person is more likely to be pushed away from the rear wheels rather than run over by them. The cost of each device is very small within the context of the cost of a heavy truck, and they can even offset their own costs through improved fuel efficiency. But beyond that, the cost of side guards is nothing compared to the legal liability a company risks if they are involved in a collision that causes serious harm or death. And, of course, it is the right thing to do if it can save lives and reduce physical harm to people.

A lawsuit filed last week in King County Superior Court alleges that a Recology garbage truck driver failed to signal or slow down before turning across the 12th Ave bike lane at Yesler Way, striking and killing Christian Salyer. The lawsuit alleges the truck ran over" Salyer, though it does not include more horrible specifics about how he was killed. It is difficult to discern from images of the scene whether the truck had side guards installed or whether side guards could have prevented the tragedy. However, the death immediately led to calls for truck side guard policies, including this bill as well as Mayor Katie Wilson's executive action in August.

Following passage of the two bills, the Council went into two executive sessions to discuss pending, potential and actual litigation," presumably at least partially related to the historic district changes in CB 121296 since Councilmembers had discussed the need for legal review before taking further action. Executive sessions are not public and give the Council the opportunity to confer with the city's legal counsel, though debate related to policy decisions and official Council actions are still required happen in public.