Vision Zero – a road safety policy innovation

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine Sweden's Vision Zero road safety policy. In particular, the paper focuses on how safety issues were framed, which decisions were made, and what are the distinctive features of Vision Zero. The analysis reveals that the decision by the Swedish Parliament to adopt Vision Zero as Sweden's road safety policy was a radical innovation. The policy is different in kind from traditional traffic safety policy with regard to problem formulation, its view on responsibility, its requirements for the safety of road users, and the ultimate objective of road safety work. The paper briefly examines the implications of these findings for national and global road safety efforts that aspire to achieving innovative road safety policies in line with the Decade

Thinking about the history of road safety research: Past achievements and future challenges

“…Moreover, recognizing that human errors are unavoidable and, therefore, a road traffic system should be created with inherent safety features which would enable to mitigate the consequences of those errors, a new level of system thinking in road safety was introduced. Among the first countries to suggest this approach were the Netherlands (Wegman & Aarts, 2006), where the notion of a sustainably-safe system was developed, and Sweden which suggested the Vision Zero (Belin et al, 2012;Tingvall & Haworth, 1999). Australia followed with the development of the Safe-system approach that is currently a general concept promoted in the developed countries (OECD, 2008).…”

Evidence-based and data-driven road safety management

“…Today, Vision Zero is a politically adopted public road safety policy with broad political support [28]. One important component of Vision Zero is the shared responsibility between the 'system designers' e.g.…”

Safety of ‘the vulnerable road users’: current challenges and need for a new approach

“…The readers may recall that we had carried an article by Belin, Vedung, and Tillgren (2012) which discussed the concept of 'Vision Zero' in traffic safety. The Swedish Vision Zero policy was based on the work on a safe system approach.…”