Zero road deaths and serious injuries: leading a paradigm shift to a safe system

The concept of a Safe System, in the context of road safety, originated in Sweden and the Netherlands in the 1980s and 1990s. At the time, scientists and policy makers began to question the prevailing view that the safety of road users was, in the last instance, their own responsibility and that the task of road safety policy was thus primarily to influence road users’ behaviour so they would act safely at all times. As the decades-long decreases in the number of road fatalities and severe injuries were levelling out, it became clear a predominant focus on education, information, regulation and enforcement was no longer delivering progress. A rethink was needed. This report describes a paradigm shift in road safety policy, being led by a handful of countries, according to the principles of a Safe System. A Safe System is based on the premise that road crashes are both predictable and preventable, and that it is possible to move towards zero road deaths and serious injuries. This, however, requires a fundamental rethink of the governance and implementation of road safety policy. To stem the road death epidemic, the United Nations have set the target of halving traffic fatalities by 2020. Every year, 1.25 million people are killed in road crashes and up to 50 million are seriously injured. Road crashes kill more people than malaria or tuberculosis and are among the ten leading causes of death. Their economic cost is estimated at 2-5% of GDP in many countries. Written by a group of international road safety experts, this report provides leaders in government, administrations, business and academia with emerging best practices and the starting point to chart their own journeys towards a Safe System. The report highlights need for a new approach to cutting the casualty toll and is called Zero Road Deaths and Serious Injuries: Leading a Paradigm Shift in Road Safety. It has a number of core recommendations. The conventional approach to road safety seeks incremental improvements to current practice. However a Safe System works backwards from the vision of eliminating road fatalities and serious injuries, giving new perspectives as to effective instruments In the countries and cities that have adopted a Safe System, innovation occurred where leaders strongly felt that the current approach no longer delivered. Strong and visionary leaders, who galvanise policy making as well as public opinion, open the way for others to follow and ensure that a sense of urgency permeates government agencies. Today, avoiding harmful crashes is the responsibility of the road user. A Safe System requires everyone with a role in the traffic environment to recognise this role and assume responsibility for making traffic safe. Shared responsibility is the basis for integrated policies and complementary actions that leverage all parts of a Safe System for greater overall safety. The issue of road safety is a critical one as road crashes are the leading cause of death worldwide for young people aged 15-29 and the ninth leading cause of death overall, killing more people than malaria or tuberculosis. Rapid motorisation in many lower-income countries points to rising numbers of road deaths in the future, while in many higher-income countries, progress in reducing fatalities has stalled. The United Nations set a target to halve the number of road fatalities over the coming years. Achieving the 50% reduction enshrined in the UN Sustainable Development Goals will require governments to fundamentally review road safety policies. José Viegas, Secretary-General of the International Transport Forum said, “There is huge potential for lower-income countries to leapfrog the spikes in road fatalities usually seen with growing car numbers, by drawing on lessons from the Safe System pioneers. Investments into capacity-building measures for those countries will pay off in human lives saved.” The ITF report highlights how cities can use a Safe System to improve road safety for the high share of vulnerable road users such as pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists or seniors in urban traffic.