SAN JOSE’S TRAFFIC FATALITIES declined once again in 2025, helping the city move closer toward its goal of eliminating all road deaths over the next 15 years.
Last year, 41 people died in traffic accidents on the city’s roadways, a 16% drop from 2024, when 49 people died, and the lowest figure the city has seen since 2012, according to traffic safety figures. The finding marks the second straight year of declines for San Jose after traffic fatalities peaked in 2022 at 63.
“It’s a tremendous win,” Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Clarrissa Cabansagan told San José Spotlight. “I can no longer say that somebody dies on our streets every week in San Jose.”
Despite the improving safety figures, advocates like Cabansagan acknowledge plenty of work still lies ahead for San Jose.
“It’s still not zero,” Cabansagan said.
The gains in 2025 come 10 years after San Jose launched its Vision Zero program, an effort to reduce traffic accidents by carrying out roadway improvements and encouraging safer driving habits among residents.
Central to this effort has been the use of so-called quick build materials to quickly and cheaply adjust roadway configurations, either to encourage slower driving or create larger buffers protecting cyclists and pedestrians. For example, in 2023 the city received $12.9 million through a federal grant program to add safety features to four transit corridors. Earlier projects, financed with a mix of city funds and grant awards, included roadway improvement work along Senter Road and the Story Road-Keyes Street corridor in East San Jose.
City officials also point to road safety awareness initiatives, such as Slow Down, San Jose, a multilingual education campaign launched in 2024. In addition, the San Jose City Council voted last year to reduce posted speed limits along 18 roadways.
“Combined, it seems these efforts and the public’s receptiveness have started to turn the tide,” Colin Heyne, a spokesperson for San Jose’s Department of Transportation, told San José Spotlight.
At the time San Jose adopted its Vision Zero program in 2015, becoming the fourth city in the U.S. to do so, the city was in the middle of a yearslong surge of deadly traffic accidents that saw fatalities rise 37% between 2008 and 2019. Conditions have generally improved since then, despite a two-year surge in road deaths following the outbreak of COVID-19.
Last year’s improving fatality figures included declines in traffic deaths for people in vehicles, on bikes and on motorcycles. Pedestrian fatalities held roughly even at 20.
The city also tracks major injuries from traffic accidents. While full figures for 2025 have not yet been released, preliminary data running through June suggests San Jose has not had the same success reducing major injury accidents that it has with fatalities.
“Really funding is what we need at this point,” District 9 Councilmember Pam Foley, who served on the city’s Vision Zero Task Force until it ended last year, told San José Spotlight.
Foley said ongoing road improvement projects are taking place in the city’s downtown and along major roadways like Tully Road and McKee Road.
“So we’re doing that little by little, but more funding is really what we need in order to complete things,” she said.
Foley said additional funding could also help boost the city’s effort to deploy automated speed cameras around town. Federal grant funding for the cameras has faced delays, she said.
Even as San Jose advances toward its 2040 Vision Zero goal of zero traffic deaths, road safety advocates said their sense of urgency hasn’t dissipated.
“I believe that we could be moving faster,” Jordan Moldow, the chair of a citizen advisory committee that helps steer the city’s traffic safety efforts, told San José Spotlight.
He is urging the city to move even more rapidly to advance quick build projects and to update the design guidelines for roadwork to bring them more in line with the most recent roadway safety standards.
“Every one of these deaths is one of our residents, or family members or loved ones,” Moldow said. “The sooner we get to zero, the fewer lives we have lost on our streets and the safer that people will feel.”
Contact Keith Menconi at keith@sanjosespotlight.com or @KeithMenconi on X.
This story originally appeared in San José Spotlight.