Safety, road policy changes

Belin, M. Public road safety policy change and its implementation—Vision Zero, a road safety policy innovation. 2012, Karohnska University, Sweden. 

Policies that relate to road users and their behaviour fall within the safer road users category of the Safe System approach to road safety. Within a safe road system, road safety authorities and road users are understood to share the responsibility of using the system safely and responsibly. Behavioural adaptation to road user-related policies can potentially take many forms, and so it is best if consideration of the potential for behavioural adaptation is conducted on a case-by-case basis. In this section, four examples of behavioural adaptation to road user policies are presented the requirement for vehicle occupants to wear seat belts, bans on mobile phone use by drivers, policies related to impaired driving, and the use of road safety cameras to monitor and change driver behaviour. 

Magnitude of effect The extent to which a road safety policy is associated with changes on its target risk factor will influence the likelihood of... 

In summary, the SUNflower, or pyramid, approach to understanding the effects of policy decisions consists of different layers so that causal relationships among changes in the layers can be modelled. This can be seen as a core element of the SUNflower approach. Accordingly, road safety management can thus be seen as part of the bottom layer of the pyramid structure and culture . Bliss and Breen (2009) have divided road safety management into seven functions ... 

What is striking here is that one person (the minister) effectively delayed these safety measures for some 3 years. The presumed concerns about public acceptability were shown to be unfounded. So often, when change is proposed, governments (and certainly individual politicians) are well behind the evolution of public opinion. This is often the lot of innovative policy in the road safety field. 

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