Streets For Life

Supporting Safer, Healthier Neighborhoods

When we envision a better future of transportation at Nuro, we dream about a lot more than autonomous delivery. We imagine a future with streets that are friendlier for everyone — whether in a vehicle, on a bike, on foot, or in a wheelchair. We imagine streets that are safer for children playing, families walking to nearby parks or the bus stop, and people commuting to work or school by bike. Safer streets lead to healthier, happier, and more cohesive communities.

As part of the United Nations’ Global Road Safety Week, Nuro is proud to sign the Streets for Life open letter. This letter encourages policymakers to set the maximum speed limit in residential neighborhoods at 20 miles per hour (that’s about 30 kilometers per hour, for the rest of the world). Research shows that lower speeds are crucial to reducing harm in a collision, and that lower speeds can reduce the chance of a collision in the first place.

Safety is Nuro’s top priority — and for us, safety is about more than designing self-driving software: it also means vehicle and street design that prioritizes the safety of people on the roads.

Last week, we shared new research from VTTI that found that, for every mile of driving replaced by a zero-occupant design vehicle, the risk of fatality or injury can be reduced by approximately 60%, even beyond the potential safety gains from autonomy software alone. We are deploying R2 — Nuro’s custom, low-speed, and zero-occupant vehicle — in three states today, and R2 recently started delivering pizzas with Domino’s in Houston.

We’re working to build a safer, more sustainable transportation future with world-class software and novel vehicles, but we know this vision requires more than one company’s technology. It requires a global rethinking of our streets to accommodate all forms of transportation, starting at the community level. That’s why we’ve also supported the City of Houston’s adoption of its first-ever Vision Zero program, partnered with organizations that advocate for safer active transportation infrastructure and why we are proud to sign this letter today.

We invite you to join us in signing the letter here and sharing it with your networks using #Love30.