Vision Zero: Remaking Road Safety

Paternalism and acceptability in road safety work

“…The system of road traffic has traditionally been fairly liberal, with low barriers to entry and respect for the privacy of individuals, as long as they abide by regulations, and frequently also when they do not (Elvebakk, 2007). Safety work, however, develops, and road safety thinking is influenced by developments in other fields of safety, with less liberal traditions.…”

Vision zero: a toolkit for road safety in the modern era

“…Surprisingly, VZ was not implemented in response to a relatively high death rate from road traffic collisions; Sweden already had one of the lowest rates of road traffic casualties in the world. Rather, VZ was implemented because advocates argued that any deaths were too high of a price to pay for mobility (Elvebakk 2007). …”

“…Instead, mobility has to become a function of safety so that greater mobility is afforded only when a road system is safe (Tingvall and Haworth 1999). This approach follows the standards set in the air, railway, and nuclear power industries, which consider any injuries or deaths as preventable tragedies (Elvebakk 2007; McAndrews 2013). VZ asserts that the road traffic industry should not be the exception to this rule (Elvebakk 2007).…”

“…Certainly, road users are an important part of the road transport system, but infrastructure (including enforcement infrastructure) is also important. A “systems perspective” that takes into account the interaction of design elements and all actors in the road transport system is necessary to achieve the highest level of road safety (Elvebakk 2007). One policy that aims to do exactly that is Vision Zero (VZ), which was created in Sweden and adopted by the Swedish parliament in 1997 (Johansson 2009).…”

Swedish Vision Zero policies for safety – A comparative policy content analysis

“…A few Vision Zero studies have focused on key components, such as problem formulation and design principles (Johansson, 2009), concluding that the introduction of Vision Zero entails a change in traditions and road traffic culture, as well as new ethical and moral principles (Elvebakk, 2007), leading to trade-offs, differences and conflict of interests within the policy area. Vision Zero has been criticized for presenting an unobtainable, unrealistic, rhetorical, and irrational goal (Elvik, 1999;Lind and Schmidt, 1999), for undermining the individual responsibility and freedom (Ekelund, 1999), and for not being cost-efficient (Elvik, 2003).…”