Mel29g
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Initial Contributions The Swedish Approach to Road Safety
The responsibility of road safety has traditionally been placed on the individual road user rather than on the designers of the system. Road safety has tended to focus on encouraging good behaviour by road users via licensing, testing, education, training and publicity. Sweden is among those countries with the lowest number of traffic fatalities in relation to its population. However, in spite of this excellent record, in 1997 the Swedish Parliament introduced a new approach to road safety called “Vision Zero”. Vision Zero is based on a refusal to accept human deaths or lifelong suffering as a result of road traffic accidents (Elvik and Amundsen, 2000). It requires moving the emphasis away from reducing the number of accidents to eliminating the risk of chronic health impairment caused by road accidents. Vision Zero in Sweden requires fatalities and serious injuries to be reduced to zero by 2020.
The 1990 Swedish National Traffic Safety Programme set a target of less than 600 fatalities for traffic safety by 2000. In 1993, the Road Safety Office merged and became the Swedish National Road Administration (SNRA). In 1994 the SNRA, now responsible for national traffic safety work, presented a National Traffic Safety Programme for the period 1995–2000. A new target of 400 fatalities for the year 2000 was adopted. This original target was achieved in 1994. The intentions of the National Traffic Safety Programme, with ten sub-targets for traffic behaviour, were not reached but abandoned with the discussion of the Vision Zero concept. An interim target of reducing the number of road accident fatalities from 600 in 2000 to 270 in 2007 was adopted as a move towards the Vision Zero target. The annual number of fatalities has remained constant during the period 1994 to 2004. In 2004, there were 480 deaths (EC, 2004).
Vision Zero requires a paradigm shift in addressing the issue of road safety (Rechnitzer and Grzebieta, 1999). It requires abandoning the traditional economic model where road safety is provided at reasonable cost and the traditional transport model in which safety must be balanced against mobility. At the core of the Vision Zero is the biomechanical tolerance of human beings. Vision Zero promotes a road system where crash energy cannot exceed human tolerance. While it is accepted that crashes in the transport system occur due to human error, Vision Zero requires no crash should be more severe than the tolerance of humans. The blame for fatalities in the road system is assigned to the failure of the road system rather that the road user (Wadhwa, 2001).
Vision Zero is based on the ethical imperative that (Tingvall and Haworth, 1999): “It can never be ethically acceptable that people are killed or seriously injured when moving within the road system.”
Accidents have to be prevented from leading to fatalities and serious injuries by designing roads, vehicles and transport services in a way that someone can tolerate the violence of an accident without being killed or seriously injured. Common long-term disabling injuries and non-injury accidents are outside the scope of the vision. Vision Zero is estimated to achieve a possible reduction in the number of fatalities by a quarter to one third over a ten-year period (SNRA, 2003).
Vision Zero strategic principles are:
• The traffic system has to adapt to take better account of the needs, mistakes and vulnerabilities of road users. • The level of violence that the human body can tolerate without being killed or seriously injured forms the basic parameter in the design of the road transport system. • Vehicle speed is the most important regulating factor for safe road traffic. It should be determined by the technical standards for roads and vehicles so as not to exceed the level of violence that the human body can tolerate. The approach is: • To create a road environment that minimises the risk of road users making mistakes and that prevents serious human injury when designing, operating and maintaining the state road network. • To set an example in the SNRA’s own operations through the quality assurance (from a road safety perspective) of journeys and transports in all areas of activity, both those undertaken in-house and those contracted. • To analyse accidents that have resulted in death or serious injury in traffic and, where feasible, initiate suitable measures so as to avoid the repetition of such accidents. • To stimulate all players within the road transport system to work resolutely towards achieving mutually targeted objectives and conduct the work on road safety in close co-operation with all players within the road transport system. • To take advantage of, and further develop, the commitment of the general public to safer traffic.
Vision Zero emphasises what the optimum state of the road should be rather than possible ways of reducing current problems. The main change instigated by Vision Zero is a new way of dividing responsibilities for road safety. Rather than emphasising the responsibility of the road user alone, Vision Zero explicitly states that responsibility is shared both by the system designers and the road user:
1. The designers of the system are always ultimately responsible for the design, operation and use of the road transport system and thereby responsible for the level of safety within the entire system. 2. Road users are responsible for following the rules for using the road transport system set by the system designers. 3. If road users fail to obey these rules due to lack of knowledge, acceptance or ability, or if injuries occur, the system designers are required to take necessary further steps to counteract people being killed or seriously injured.
In 1999, a short-term action plan was launched by the Swedish government, containing 11 points aimed at strengthening and stimulating traffic safety work in accordance with Vision Zero principles (Ministry of Industry, Employment and Communications, 1999):
1. A focus on the most dangerous roads (e.g. priority for installing centre-guardrails for eliminating head-on collisions, removing obstacles next to roads, etc.) 2. Safer traffic in built-up areas (e.g. a safety analysis of street networks in 102 municipalities led to reconstruction of streets; the efforts are continuing.) 3. Emphasis on the responsibilities of road users (e.g. creating more respect for traffic rules in particular with regard to speed limits, seat belt use, and intoxicated driving.) 4. Safe bicycle traffic (e.g. campaign for using bicycle helmets, a voluntary bicycle safety standard.) 5. Quality assurance in transport work (e.g. public agencies with large transportation needs will receive traffic safety (and environmental impact) instructions on how to assure the quality of their own transportation services and those procured from outside firms.) 6. Winter tyre requirement (e.g. a new law mandating specific tyres under winter road conditions.) 7. Making better use of Swedish technology (e.g. promoting the introduction of technology - available or to be developed - that relatively soon can be applied, such as seat belt reminders, in-car speed adaptation systems (ISA), alcohol ignition interlocks for preventing drinking and driving, and electronic driver licences.) 8. Responsibilities of road transport system designers (e.g. establishment of an independent organisation for road traffic inspection is proposed by a commission of inquiry on the responsibilities of the public sector and the business community for safe road traffic.) 9. Public responses to traffic violations (e.g. a commission of inquiry is reviewing existing traffic violation rules in the light of the Vision Zero principles and of ensuring due process of law.) 10. The role of voluntary organisations (e.g. the government is evaluating the road safety work of the 'Nationalföreningen för trafiksäkerhetens främjande' (National Society for Road Safety (NTF)) and its use of state funds.) 11. Alternative forms of financing new roads (e.g. possibilities are studied for other forms of supplementing public financing of major road projects.) 10 In the autumn of 2001 the Government presented an infrastructure plan, where the traffic safety work will fulfil the 2007 target.
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Hello, Mel29g, and welcome to Wikipedia! My name is Adam and I work with the Wiki Education Foundation; I help support students who are editing as part of a class assignment.
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