The Importance of Adopting a Safe System Approach—Translation of Principles into Practical Solutions

Abstract

The 1990s saw the emergence of the Swedish Vision Zero and the Dutch Sustainable Safety philosophies on road safety. At the time, both were considered somewhat radical and ambitious departures from the status quo. The principles that underpinned both the Dutch and Swedish philosophies were combined into an internationalized form, now known more widely as the Safe System. The Safe System came to attention early in the 2000s, when formally adopted by a number of countries committed to preventing severe road trauma. The Safe System defines a new way of thinking about road safety compared with what had commonly been used around the world in the decades before its conception. The Safe System strives to eliminate death and severe injury from the world’s roads. It also underlines the importance of the safe management of kinetic energy and system-based design that seeks to ensure that crashes are prevented or, at worst, crash forces fall within the threshold of human tolerance to severe injury. Once this thinking is embraced by the system designer, new solutions begin to emerge, and existing designs can be seen in a different, more insightful light. The process of transitioning to the ambitious, ethically based philosophy of the Safe System, as a means of addressing the risks of using our roads, has not happened smoothly or quickly. Practitioners have had difficulty in translating the philosophy and principles of the Safe System into practice. It is hoped that by providing examples of the differences in decisions made under Safe System principles when designing and operating roads, large gains will be made toward the lasting elimination of road trauma. A major focus of the discussion is on the Safe System-aligned design of infrastructure, coupled with vehicle operating speeds, while also recognizing the contributions to risk reduction that can come from improved human performance and the evolving safety features and technologies of modern vehicles.