Vision Zero

About Vision Zero, Stockholm Environment Institute, 2005. 

Elvebakk, B. and Steiro, T. (2009) First principles, second hand perceptions and interpretations of vision zero in Norway. Safety Science, 47(7), 958-66. 

Swuste, P. (2012) Editorial - WOS2010, on the road to vision zero Safety Science, 50(10), 1939-40. 

In Sweden, Vision Zero was developed in the second half of the 1990s. This Swedish vision has four central elements. First, there is the ethical dimension. The only target that can be formulated is that of zero road casualties. Safety should not be weighed against other interests. In this vision, mobility and accessibility are derived from an inherently safe system. 

A famous example of a measure which fits within Vision Zero perfectly well is the design of rural roads in Sweden with 2 -i-1 lanes and a mid-barrier, also known in Sweden as collision-free roads (Figure 22.10). The two directions are physically separated, often by cable barriers. This cross-section design is appropriate for Swedish conditions because a straightforward motorway design, a solution used in many countries, is not necessary from a capacity point of view. Furthermore, Sweden has a tradition of building wide rural roads (13 m, with two traffic lanes and two hard shoulders) which can easily be redesigned into a 2 -i-1 cross-section. In addition, side... 

Two of the above illustrated visions can be labelled Safe System Sustainable Safety (the Netherlands) and Vision Zero (Sweden). The Australian approach was introduced much later, and uses principles which were derived from the Dutch and Swedish visions and adapted to Australian conditions and circumstances. The Dutch and Swedish visions have far more similarities than differences. In both visions, the human aspect takes pride of place Sustainable Safety and Vision Zero having taken the physical vulnerability (in a crash) as a starting point. The second aspect (the human being as a road user who commits errors and offences) also has a central position in both visions, albeit that Sustainable Safety has worked this out in much... 

A second important similarity between the Sustainable Safety and Vision Zero approaches is the shared responsibility of road user and system manager/designer/ operator. Both visions embrace the concept of shared responsibility instead of blaming the victim , as used to be the case in other approaches in the past. Shared responsibility also implies good cooperation between different tiers of the government. This is a component in both visions. In the Netherlands this resnlted in a covenant between the three layers of government with a considerable financial impulse to execute the associated resolutions. 

Of course, there are also differences between the visions. Vision Zero comprises an explicit ethical component in stating that road casualties should not be a by-product of road traffic, but should be avoided at any cost. On the other hand, the Netherlands uses the concept of avoidable crashes as its starting point. This is construed as we know the causes of a crash, we know what to do about them, the costs of the interventions are lower than the benefits that are expected, and they fit within the Sustainable Safety vision. This approach attaches an important weight to cost-effectiveness when prioritizing interventions. 

Belin, M.-A., TUlgren R, and Veding, E. 2012. Vision Zero—A road safety policy innovation. 

Swedish Government. 1997. Bill 1996/97 137 Vision Zero and the traffic safety society. 

Tingvall, C., and Haworth, N. 1999. Vision Zero An ethical approach to safety and mobility. In Proceedings of the 6th FTE International Conference Road Safety and Traffic Enforcement, Beyond 2000, Melbourne. 

Condition I is obvious— with no activity of the population there should be no road deaths. Condition II goes back to Vision Zero (Tingvall, 1998) which means no fatalities in road accidents. Condition III takes account of the fact that there is a breakpoint within the series of road fatality rate numbers as a country develops. 

The charts above confirm that in general the CSPF has been adequately identified. What may be debatable are the rigorous requirements for the right hand side range of the function towards the target value. However, this approach can be justified by Vision Zero which is confirmed by the actual RFR values for many countries (Australia, Netherlands, Japan, Germany, Portugal). To confirm the claim, we must continue to watch the road fatality rates in these countries. 

Tingvall C., (1998) The Swedish Vision Zero and how parliamentary approval was obtained. Road Safety Research. Policing. Educational Conference Wellington, New Zealand. 

The last part. Crash Causation and Countermeasures, focuses on what we have learned over the past one hundred years - and especially over the past few decades - about the causes of traffic accidents, their relative frequencies, and the means that have proven successfiil in combating accidents. The crash causation chapter also has a methodology component, because often the relative frequency of various causes of traffic accidents is methodology-bound meaning that different methods of analyses yield different conclusions. The countermeasures chapter is divided into first domains in which countermeasures can and have been applied organizational actions (such as "Vision Zero" mentioned above), behavioral changes in drivers and other road users, environmental treatments of the roadway and its furniture, and vehicular changes in both crash prevention and injury reduction. 

Fahlquist, J. N. (2006). Responsibility ascriptions and Vision Zero. Accid. Anal. Prev., 38, 1113-1118. 

Fildes, B. (2001). Achieving the national strategy target - a role for Vision Zero Monash University Accident Research Center, Clayton Victoria, AU. 

Safety first. Vision Zero—vision of zero injuries. These are ideas with an unconditional priority in any part of social life nowadays. 

We will here use the Swedish National Road Administration (SNRA) as an example. This authority has overall responsibihty for traffic safety in Sweden and has direct responsibility for government roads. In 1997, the Swedish parliament decided that the so-called zero-mindset or vision zero philosophy regarding traffic fatalities and severe injuries should guide long-term traffic-safety work (Swedish National Road Administration, 1999). SNRA has the main responsibility for the traffic safety results, although it does not have all the necessary traffic-safety measures at its command. 

The vision zero philosophy has been translated into an operational goal. This is to accomplish continuous reductions in the frequency of severe traffic accidents. More specifically, the goal is to reduce the number of traffic fataHties by 50 per cent in a ten-year period, starting from 1996. 

The Swedish parliament, as long ago as 1997, passed a motion to the effect that no one behaving reasonably during their road use should be disabled or killed as a result of that use. It is known as Vision Zero, and it has dramatically changed the Swedish approach to road transport systan design and operation. The Swedes are not yet at zero, but they are in the top echelon on the safety performance ladder. 

The dramatic progress in Sweden may be indicative of a radically different approach to traffic safety, especially when recent progress is examined. In the first decade of this century, Sweden reduced the total number of deaths from road crashes by almost 8% compared with reductions of less than 3% in each of Australia and the United States. Recall that Vision Zero was adopted as a philosophy for road transport in the Swedish parliament in the late 1990s. In Chapter 8 we explore in detail how prevailing road use culture and traffic safety performance interact. Equally importantly, we explore how a focus on the rate of transport safety reinforces a belief in the inevitability of death and serious injury as a price that must be paid for personal mobility. 

As Belin points out, the Swedish Vision Zero as a public policy envisages a chain of responsibility that both begins and ends with the system designers. Of course, the accountability and financial implications of such a policy are exactly what make it so difficult for governments to accept. 

The Safe System, explored in detail in Chapter 6, places a moral responsibility on those who design, build, and operate the road system to do their very best to ensure no one is killed or seriously injured. But this moral responsibility has not been codified—it is, in effect, a responsibility for solving the traffic safety problem. This is the sense we should adopt when we use the Swedish term Vision Zero, as opposed to the traditional placing of total responsibility on the individual road user for his or her own fate. Elvik has correctly argued that zero is absurd if taken literally, as it would require a level of investment that would result in such a drastic redistribution of public monies that other ways people die or are disabled would be increased in frequency. It needs to be seen as a forerunner of, or a catalyst for, a broader shift in the way we think about our cars and in the way we use our roads. 

Success in innovative policy making can be seen when traffic safety is separated from political partisanship. The Swedes made Vision Zero an all-party commitment within the Swedish parliament in 1997. In Australia, the government of Western Australia went to considerable lengths to engage politicians from across the political spectrum before submitting its new traffic safety strategy to the parliament. Sadly, there are few examples of this process of de-politicising proposed interventions. 

In 1997 the Swedish parliament had the courage to pass a resolution to the effect that no one behaving reasonably shonld be seriously injured or killed through their daily use of the roads. The Swedish Vision Zero drew a line in the sand. Nonetheless, more than 15 years later, the advocates of this vision still encounter opposition based on questions of practicality and cost. Having a vision is one thing realising it is quite another. 

Elvik, R. Can injury prevention efforts go too far Reflections on some possible implications of Vision Zero for road accident fatalities. Accident Analysis and Prevention, 1999, 31 265-286. 

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

Fahlquist, J. Responsibihty ascriptions and Vision Zero. Accident Analysis and Prevention, 2006, 38 1113-1118. 

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