Policies and strategies
Road safety policy
To achieve the necessary shift in the mind-set of decision makers and stakeholders, a road safety vision or philosophy needs to be far-reaching and long term, looking well beyond what is immediately achievable. In contrast, an effective strategy or plan of action needs to start here and now, and set out achievable risk-reducing measures for the foreseeable future, typically for, say, the next 10 years. Targets that are soundly related to the stated measures and their likely effectiveness can provide both clear motivation for stakeholders from whom action is expected and meaningful yardsticks against which progress with implementation of the strategy can be measured. (ETSC 2003)
Typically it is a transport ministry that leads government policy on road safety. The better countries (in road safety terms) recognise the multi-disciplinary nature of road safety and involve other ministries and allow external bodies to contribute to policy discussions. However they are determined, road safety policies should not emerge as a series of unrelated statements, but should be developed to meet a strategic goal. Road safety policies usually deal with national commitments over a long period of time and they identify macro, national performance targets.
Policy goals
Road safety policy goals are of two broad types:
a vision - such as the Swedish 'vision zero' which declares that the government is resolved to eliminating deaths and serious injuries in the Swedish road transport system, or the Dutch 'sustainable safe system' which aims to provide an infrastructure which is adapted to road users' capacities, or the Russian vision of having a society with a wide knowledge and understanding of the comprehensive consequences of traffic accidents and becoming the leader in road safety among the CIS countries
pragmatic, quantified targets - such as in the UK where a 40% reduction in death and serious injury is sought by 2010, compared with the 1994/1998 average.
It is not inconsistent to have both a long-term vision, and short-term targets. South Africa does this in its 'Road to Safety'.
The Department of Transport's Mission Statement for South African roads was defined in the 1996 White Paper on Transport Policy. It is:
"To ensure an acceptable level of quality in road traffic, with the emphasis on road safety, on the South African urban and rural road network".
Strategic objective
In order to realise the mission, an equally clear and simple strategic objective is required. We have set this objective as being:
"To reduce crashes, deaths and injuries on South Africa's roads by 5% year-on-year until the year 2005 - at a saving to the economy of R770 million per annum - and then, based on the strengthened institutional platform created, by at least 10% year-on-year until the year 2009."
To learn more about South Africa's road safety objective please visit the Department of Transports website: http://www.transport.gov.za/ and search for the "The road to safety 2001-2005".
To view road safety visions and policies for a number of European Union member countries please visit: http://europa.eu.int/comm/transport/road/figures/profiles/index_en.htm and click on a specific country under the heading "road safety country profiles".
Policies for regions
A number of declarations for regions or for groups of countries have been agreed on in past years. Declarations are useful to keep up momentum for on-going road safety work and to push maybe less ambitious countries in road safety terms to commit to a common vision / goal and action plan.
The EU Ministers (including those of the enlargement countries, the other candidate countries and the EEA and EFTA countries), have all signed up to the "Verona declaration" http://www.erf.be/files/2590_105_VeronaDecl_Sintesi_FINAL.pdf
…which includes a shared policy and action plan: "Saving 20,000 lives on our Roads - A shared responsibility," put together by the European Commission. The overall target is to reduce the number of road crash victims by at least 50% by 2010. The action plan can be downloaded from the European Commission homepage: http://europa.eu.int/comm/transport/road/library/rsap/rsap_en.pdf
The United Nation General Assembly following the World Health day in April 2004 adopted a resolution calling for improvement of road safety globally and asking WHO to act as coordinator on road safety issues within the UN system. To see the full resolution please follow this link:
http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/media/news/en/unga_58_289_en.pdf
The ASEAN Transport Ministers signed in November 2004 the "Phnom Penh Ministerial Declaration on ASEAN Road Safety" http://www.aseansec.org/16588.htm expressing "great concern that the road safety problem in the ASEAN region has reached alarming proportion, with over 75,000 deaths and 4.7 million injuries occurring annually, causing very serious physical, psychological and material harm to the victims and their families, as well as the huge economic loss of over US$ 15 billion each year (2.2% of annual Gross Domestic Product) to the ASEAN region as a whole". The ministers agreed to support the actions and initiatives developed within the ASEAN Road Safety Strategy and Action Plan 2005-2010.
Target setting in relation to vision
The European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) report: Assessing Risk and Setting Targets in Transport Safety Programmes explains how both visions and short term targets are necessary and stresses that there need be no contradiction between a far-reaching long-term vision and a challenging but achievable, and thus necessarily more modest, shorter-term target associated with a strategy for the foreseeable future. If properly communicated and understood, both the ultimate vision and targets for the next foreseeable steps towards it can serve their respective purposes side by side.
It is important to find a widely acceptable balance between challenge and achievability of the targets. Targets that go beyond what is achievable in terms of the likely effects of the foreseeable measures can demotivate instead of motivating, while targets that could be reached without a high level of implementation of all the envisaged measures can induce widespread complacency, with each stakeholder tempted to feel that only part of what they could contribute is really needed.
Targets need to be quantitative and progress towards them needs to be measurable.
Many governments have set targets to reduce the number of deaths. This is consistent with the high value attached to prevention of deaths in estimating the social and economic costs of road collisions, and is in line with understandable public concern and with the concentration of media coverage on fatal collisions. Although numbers of the severest non-fatally injured are highly correlated with numbers of deaths, trends in the latter do not necessarily fully reflect changes in the amount of injury on the roads. In the last decade, with increasing densities of traffic, downward trends in deaths have been accompanied by increases in lesser injury in many (EU) member states. Some have therefore set targets in terms of numbers injured, distinguishing between serious and slight injury according to their reporting systems. Targets can also be set in terms of severity of collisions, as measured by suitable ratios of numbers of casualties or collisions. Actual levels of risk would obviously be addressed more directly by setting targets for death or injury rates per unit of distance travelled or time spent travelling, but the scope for this is limited in some countries by the availability of exposure data, and more generally by the perception that it is easier to communicate with stakeholders and the public in terms of numbers than of rates."
To see full ETSC report please go to: http://www.etsc.be/documents/riskassess.pdf
Policy hierarchy
In setting road safety policy, there is always a balance to be struck between the general and the specific. For example, in the UK, there is a legal duty placed on local highway authorities to provide road safety services, but wide variations in how local authorities interpret this national policy. Thus, within a general policy there often needs to be a set of detailed policies and commitments to practical actions to guide activities.
Themes or sectors
Policies, and the consequent activities, can be grouped under thematic or sectoral headings. For example the UK Road Safety Strategy adopts a thematic approach
1.Safer for children
2.Safer drivers - training and testing
3.Safer drivers - drink, drugs and drowsiness
4.Safer infrastructure
5.Safer speeds
6.Safer vehicles
7.Safer motorcycling
8.Safer pedestrians, cyclists and horse riders
9.Better enforcement
10.Promoting safer road use
Whilst in Bangladesh a sectoral approach is used
1.National road safety council
2.Accident data system
3.Road engineering
4.Traffic legislation
5.Traffic enforcement
6.Driver training and testing
7.Vehicle safety
8.Education and publicity
9.Medical services
The sectoral approach establishes a framework with accountability for setting policy and delivery within an organisation or department. The themed approach encourages integration of policies and measures targeted at the treatment of a country's priority problems, but may rely on several organizations to deliver a particular policy. A sectoral organisation may be better for countries new to the planning process with a strong focus on improving organisation, institutions and information systems but eventually countries need to develop combinations of effective policies focused on very specific priority problems such as pedestrian safety, drink-driving, speed and young drivers. The themes need not be restricted directly to crash problems but should also consider organisational, capacity building and data requirements (system improvement). They can also include post crash measures and injury prevention and control.
Road safety policy: Swedish vision zero
Policy documents ROAD SAFETY POLICY Designation 1998:1 Date of Decision 1998-08-11
Aim
The road transport system is to be designed so that no one is killed or seriously injured in traffic. It will therefore gradually be designed to reflect human ability and the level of external violence that the human body can withstand. The road safety policy adopted by the Swedish National Road Administration (Vägverket) emphasises that our work in this field is based on protecting human life and well-being.
Approach
We shall, with the protection of human life and well-being as the basis,
- create a road environment that minimises the risk of road users making mistakes and that prevents serious human injury when designing, operating and maintaining the state road network
- set an example in our own operations through the quality assurance (from a road safety perspective) of journeys and transports in all areas of activity, both those undertaken in-house and those contracted
- analyse accidents that have resulted in death or serious injury in traffic and, where feasible, initiate suitable measures so as to avoid the repetition of such accidents
- stimulate all players within the road transport system to work resolutely towards achieving mutually targeted objectives
- conduct the work on road safety in close co-operation with all players within the road transport system
- take advantage of and further develop the commitment of the general public to safer traffic.
Responsibility
The Swedish National Road Administration has been commissioned with the overall responsibility for road safety within the road transport system. Every head of division is responsible for the effect his/her area of responsibility has on road safety. Road safety endeavours shall be conducted as an integral part of other operations.
- In its capacity as the central administrative agency responsible for the entire road transport system, the Swedish National Road Administration has been commissioned with the overall responsibility for road safety within the road transport system and shall monitor and actively promote developments within this area. This also means an obligation to endeavour to improve the transport system as a whole as required by road safety considerations.
- In its capacity as road manager the Swedish National Road Administration is responsible for road safety on the state road network. Included in this responsibility is that the construction and maintenance works contracted by the Swedish National Road Administration shall be subjected to stringent environmental demands and that the Administration shall encourage contractors to develop production methods that are adapted to road safety.
- As an organisation the Swedish National Road Administration is responsible for road safety in all internal activities. Our dominant position as a road authority offers us a great potential for being able to promote road safety considerations in technological developments relevant to our sphere of operations
- The Director-General is ultimately responsible to the Board of Directors for ensuring that road safety is taken into consideration within all areas of operation at the Swedish National Road Administration.
- Every head of division is to ensure that road safety is taken into consideration within his/her area of responsibility. He/she shall also endeavour to ensure that fellow colleagues increase their awareness and knowledge about the impact of their own activities and that of the entire road transport system on road safety. It is also incumbent on him/her to set the style and through his/her leadership strive to increase road safety awareness. This obligation also includes ensuring adherence to this policy.
- Every employee at the Swedish National Road Administration shall be familiar with the road safety policy and work according to its intentions.
- All employees are expected to set a good example through respecting traffic rules and otherwise exhibiting good conduct in traffic, both during and outside working hours.
The Traffic Safety Department monitors the work conducted on road safety within the entire organisation and throughout the road transport system as a whole.
Vision Zero
On October 9, 1997 the Road Traffic Safety Bill founded on "Vision Zero" was passed by a large majority in the Swedish Parliament. This represents an entirely new way of thinking with respect to road traffic safety.
What is Vision Zero?
Vision Zero is conceived from the ethical base that it can never be acceptable that people are killed or seriously injured when moving within the road transport system. It centres around an explicit goal, and develops into a highly pragmatic and scientifically-based strategy which challenges the traditional approach to road safety.
Vision Zero: goal
- The long term goal is that no-one will be killed or seriously injured within the Swedish road transport system.
A new approach to road safety
For many years, the emphasis in traffic safety work has been in trying to encourage the road user to respond, in an appropriate way, typically through licensing, testing, education, training and publicity to the many demands of a man-made and, increasingly, complex traffic system. Traditionally, the main reponsibility for safety has been placed on the user to achieve this end rather than on the designers of the system.
The Vision Zero approach involves an entirely new way of looking at road safety and of the design and functioning of the road transport system. It involves altering the emphasis away from enhancing the ability of the individual road user to negotiate the system to concentrating on how the whole system can operate safely. Also, Vision Zero means moving the emphasis away from trying to reduce the number of accidents to eliminating the risk of chronic health impairment caused by road accident.
Vision Zero: strategic principles
- The traffic system has to adapt to take better account of the needs, mistakes and vulnerabilities of road users.
- The level of violence that the human body can tolerate without being killed or seriously injured forms the basic parameter in the design of the road transport system.
- Vehicle speed is the most important regulating factor for a safe road traffic. It should be determined by the technical standard of both roads and vehicle so as not to exceed the level of violence that the human body can tolerate.
Vision Zero accepts that preventing all accidents is unrealistic. The aim is to manage them so they do not cause serious health impairments. The long term objective is to achieve a road transport system which allows for human error but without it leading to serious injury.
While the concept envisages responsibility for safety amongs the designers and users of the system, the designer has the final responsibility for "fail-safe" measures.
Vision Zero: system designer has primary responsibility
- System designers are responsible for the design, operation and the use of the road transport system and are thereby responsible for the level of safety within the entire system.
- Road users are responsible for following the rules for using the road transport system set by the system designers.
- If the users fail to comply with these rules due to a lack of knowledge, acceptance or ability, the system designers are required to take the necessary further steps to counteract people being killed or injured.
Vision Zero sets out the operational principles which would need to be taken up by citizens, decisionmakers, public authorities, the market and mass media if the strategy is to be effective.
Vision Zero: operational principles
- At political level not allowing road traffic to produce more health risks than other means of transportation or other major technological systems.
- At professional level seeing serious health loss due to traffic accidents as an unacceptable quality problem of products and services connected with road transportation.
- At individual level viewing serious health loss as unacceptable, being aware of what it takes to create a safe system, and playing an active part in placing demands on society and manufacturers for safe road traffic.
Action in a variety of fields is needed to produce a safe road system:
Vision Zero: action strategy
- To prevent accidents leading to serious injury.
- To reduce the severity of injury in the event of an accident.
- To ensure that the severity of injuries received is minimised through efficient rescue service, health care and rehabilitation.
A result-based action programme for safe road traffic within the principles outlined above will be defined by the Swedish agencies for future road safety work which should lead to the realisation of Vision Zero in the long run.
In the next ten years, it is estimated that it should be possible to reduce the number of fatalities by quarter to one third.