道路条件 交通安全 英文文献翻译

Vision Zero – Implementing a policy for traffic safety

The scope of this paper is to outline, in a general way, the safety philosophy inherent in present road- and street design, trace the origin of this philosophy, and to present the principles for a new design of streets and roads. It will be argued that deficiencies in the present road design philosophy are the main cause of the global road safety crisis, clearly indicating its man-made nature. A brief description is made of the decision process leading to the establishment of Vision Zero as Sweden s Traffic Safety Policy in 1997.

Following an analysis of the problem, suggestions are made for finding solutions. The solutions are based on some of the principles in Vision Zero. They include a new basic mechanism for creating error-tolerance in the road system, and new design principles for road- and street design.

The tradition of “blaming the victim” is hereby questioned and focus is put on the need for professionals to act based on these new standards. During the last 10 years the fatalities in Sweden have dropped from approximately 550/year to 450/year. Roads redesigned with median barriers have an 80% reduction in fatalities. Streets with 30 km/h design speed show similar results. This indicates that measures derived from Vision Zero strategy are effective but that large scale implementation has not yet been done.

1. The process

The Swedish Road Administration (SRA) had an overall responsibility for Road Traffic Safety in Sweden since 1993. This responsibility was further clarified by the Government in 1996. Sweden has very small Ministries (number of personnel). As a consequence Administrations like the SRA often have semi-political tasks like development of policies and targets. Decisions on policy, long term targets and overall budgets are made by the Government or the Parliament but development is made in the Administration.

Following the elections in the autumn 1994 Sweden got a new Minister for Transportation. The Minister declared that traffic safety would be one of her priorities.

A dialog was started between the Minister s Staff and the SRA on how the Minister could make traffic safety a prioritized subject.

In the spring of 1994 the SRA together with the major stakeholders for traffic safety had presented a short term program for action for the years of 1994–2000. It had the character of continuing earlier work but with more emphasis on cooperation between key actors and focus on results. Directly after this program was launched the SRA started to develop some basic ideas for a long term strategy for traffic safety. It had been recognised for some time that the contemporary traffic safety paradigm had

some problems (Johansson, 1991). Part of this problem was a lack of expected benefits of many measures, something that was recognised by among others Gerald Wilde (best described in Wilde, 2001). A comprehensive overview can be found in OECD (1990).

The new safety paradigm, Vision Zero is built around the basic idea that even if not all crashes or collisions can be avoided, all severe injuries can, in principle, be avoided. The basic idea was to build a “safe system” where all predicted crashes and collisions had tolerable health losses. The Minister and her Staff recognised that it was possible to work with the ideas behind Vision Zero in a political setting and quickly adopted the basic ideas, developed a text (translated in Belin et al., 1997), and took it to the Parliament in 1997, where it was accepted by all political parties (Tingvall, 1998). Since then, the Parliament has repeated this decision on a number of occasions. The notion of “Vision Zero” has become synonymous with the concept of “high political ambitions” in a number of other areas as well. The Government in 2008 took a decision on a Vision Zero for suicide. Much of the political debate on Vision Zero between 1995 and the Parliament s decision in 1997 was concentrated on the question”How many fatalities can we accept?” At this time Sweden had around 500 fatalities in road traffic per year. Comparisons where made with the safety level for other transport modes, (clearly a zero fatality goal), occupational safety (about 50 fatalities annually), electricity (about five fatalities annually). From this political analysis it was concluded that a zero fatality target was the only justifiable target for road traffic.

During the same time period SRA and its network concentrated work on developing strategies for radically lowering fatality risks in road traffic, typically aiming at reducing fatality risks with a factor 10. Examples follow later in this paper.

2. Vision Zero

In 1997 the Swedish Parliament passed a bill on Traffic Safety where it was stated that:

“Vision Zero means that eventually no one will be killed or seriously injured within the road transport system.”

Vision Zero does not presume that all accidents that result in personal property damage or in less serious injuries must be eliminated. These occurrences are not considered to be an essential element in the road traffic safety problem even if they can entail large costs for the State, county councils, municipalities and individuals. Rather, focus shall be placed on those incidents that lead to a person being killed or seriously injured. Vision Zero also proposes an ethical approach to the health problems associated with road traffic:

“It can never be ethically acceptable that people are killed or seriously injured

when moving within the road transport system.”

Vision Zero is said to be a long-term goal for the design and functioning of the road transport system. What is important is to realise that the Vision Zero approach will alter the aim of the work on road traffic safety; i.e., from attempting to reduce the number of accidents to the formulation of an explicit goal: to eliminate the risk of chronic health impairment caused by a traffic accident. This new approach will also alter the question from “what can we do?” to “what must we do?”

Vision Zero presumes a new division of responsibility for road traffic safety within the road transport system. The responsibility for road traffic safety should be introduced along the following lines.

1. The designers of the system are always ultimately responsible for the design, operations and use of the road transport system and are thereby responsible for the level of safety within the entire system.

2. Road users are responsible for following the rules for using the road transport system set by the system designers.

3. If road users fail to obey these rules due to a lack of knowledge, acceptance or ability, or if injuries do occur, the system designers are required to take the necessary further steps to counteract people being killed and seriously injured.

Taking the Vision Zero approach means that paying attention to human life and health is an absolute requirement in the design and functioning of the road transport system. This implies that road traffic safety issues, in similarity to environmental issues, must be clearly integrated in all the processes that affect road traffic safety in the road transport system and be based on the following:

“The level of violence that the human body can tolerate without being killed or seriously injured shall be the basic parameter in the design of the road transport system.”

It is upon this principle that the future society with safe road traffic can develop: through designing and constructing roads, vehicles and transport services so that the level of violence that can be tolerated by the human being is not exceeded; and through the effective contribution of different support systems such as rules and regulations, education, information, surveillance, rescue services, care and rehabilitation. With this as the basis, there will be a positive demand for new and effective solutions that can contribute to a road transport system where human needs, prerequisites and demands are in focus.

“It is true, that 95% of all crashes or collisions depend on human error, but according to Vision Zero philosophy, 95% of the solutions are in changing roads, streets or vehicles.”Some simple examples follow:

(1) Drivers in Sweden used to have a 92% seat-belt wearing rate. Good but not

good enough. EuroNCaP1 established a protocol for seat-belt reminders a couple of years ago having the effect that 70% of new cars sold in Sweden 2005 had seat-belt reminders. The drivers of these cars have a seat-belt wearing rate of 99%. Hence, the problem of seat-belt wearing will gradually be solved at a very low cost.

(2) Alcohol: All over the world alcohol and traffic is a big problem, even if improvements can be made with strict legislation and enforcement. By demonstrating a demand for safe transport primarily by professional transporters a demand for “proven sober” transports has risen. In Sweden about 50% of all school buses have alcohol interlocks (a device that checks if the driver is sober). A new generation of Alco locks are coming on the market (at least four competitors in Europe/USA) reducing price and improving performance.

In this way a car that reminds you to use your seat-belt, and checks your breath for alcohol, or otherwise checks your performance, and assists you to be a better, safer driver. Different aspects of the Vision Zero philosophy can be found in (Tingvall et al., 1996, 1997; Tingvall, 1998, 2007; Belin et al., 1997).

3. Traditional road design philosophy

The traditional road-oriented safety philosophy has as its starting point the accident”. Accident statistics are normally based on police reports made up on traffic accidents known to the police. These statistics have been used by road authorities world-wide for describing and analysing the road safety problem associated with roads and road design. It is important to notice that the conceptsof traffic accidents and (bad) road safety are not synonymous. Many accidents could be an indicator of (bad) safety, but if the accidents do not lead to personal injuries they are not. Road safety is a loss of health problem. A crash or accident without loss of health is no safety problem, only a cost. But the thesis put forward in this paper is another, namely that by choosing the accident” perspective, you get a safety philosophy that at its best reduces accidents, not necessarily personal injuries. And, as all modern definitions of the traffic safety problem define it as a health problem (health loss) the accident perspective misses the target.

Accident analysis shows typically that 90–95% of all accidents are caused by road users. Society s most fundamental response to accident prevention has been rules and regulations for road user behaviour. The purpose of traffic legislation is mainly to simplify the tasks for road users, making the risk of accident lower. In many cases this works as intended. But if focus is shifted to the effect of the traffic regulation on health loss, the pattern is less clear. Examples could be, for instance, traffic lights and pedestrian crossings. Installing traffic lights typically results in fewer crashes, but more severe injuries. Pedestrian crossings generally do not lead to a safer crossing for pedestrians; they facilitate crossing a street but provide no safety in themselves.

When it comes to road- and street design the dominant safety strategy overall has been to increase space for drivers and vehicles. That is, wider lanes, wider roads, straighter roads, larger crossings etc. The reasoning behind this is straightforward and logical; if drivers run off the road, make the road a little bit wider so there is room for manoeuvring the vehicle back into the lane and keeping the vehicle on the road; if drivers run off the road in bends, try making the road a little bit straighter thereby avoiding accidents in bends. This strategy has had some success in reducing the number of accidents, but even the effect on the accident risk has been questioned (Hauer, 1999). The strategy to create space for evasive action has not been successful in reducing fatalities and other severe injuries. In fact, everything else considered, this strategy increases fatalities and other health losses. A wide, strait road has more fatalities than a narrow road with many curves if everything else is the same. The reason is simple: the most predominant effect of creating more space is an increase in driving speed, which means higher levels of kinetic energy in crashes. Higher energy levels lead to more severe health losses, all other things being equal. This increase in speed has two reasons; first road administrations normally set a higher speed limit on roads that are wide and straight because they are said to have a higher safety standard, and drivers tend to drive faster anyway on these roads.

This safety philosophy to build wide, straight roads and streets is one of the main contributions to the present global road safety crisis. The result is an increase, by one or two factors of 10, in the risks of severe personal injury or fatality, compared to the Vision Zero design philosophy described later in this paper. No other design parameter has an impact of this magnitude. As an example Swedish 2-lane highways with a speed limit of 110 km/h had one of the most severe injury pattern recorded ever; out of three persons injured on these roads, one was killed. Relatively new Chinese highways produce more than 1 killed/km/year. The main difference between the Swedish rural roads and the Chinese highways is that the latter have a large quantity of vulnerable road users, who are separated” from motorised vehicles only by the “wideness” of the roads and traffic regulations e.g. pedestrian crossings. It has been shown on the Swedish roads mentioned in the example that the fatalities can be reduced by 85–90% by applying mid- and side barriers. The Chinese highways mentioned above could, at least in principle, be rebuilt reducing fatalities with up to 99%.

A note must be made on motorisation and its effect on overall safety in a country. Sweden has approximately 0.5 cars/inhabitant whereas China is only in its beginning as a motorised country with 0.04 cars/inhabitant. The World Bank has noted that the number of persons killed in a country turns from an increasing trend to a decreasing trend when the GNP/capita reaches approximately 8000 US$ (Kopits and Kropper,