Vision Zero


Vision Zero is a multi-national road traffic safety project that aims to achieve a highway system with no fatalities or serious injuries involving road traffic. It started in Sweden and was approved by their parliament in October 1997. A core principle of the vision is that 'Life and health can never be exchanged for other benefits within the society' rather than the more conventional comparison between costs and benefits, where a monetary value is placed on life and health, and then that value is used to decide how much money to spend on a road network towards the benefit of decreasing risk.
Vision Zero was introduced in 1995. Vision Zero has been variously adopted in different countries or smaller jurisdictions, although its description varies significantly. The countermeasures implemented in Vision Zero continue to be education, enforcement and engineering, applied since the 1930s.

Principles

Vision Zero is based on an underlying ethical principle that "it can never be ethically acceptable that people are killed or seriously injured when moving within the road transport system." As an ethics-based approach, Vision Zero functions to guide strategy selection and not to set particular goals or targets. In most road transport systems, road users bear complete responsibility for safety. Vision Zero changes this relationship by emphasizing that responsibility is shared by transportation system designers and road users.

Speed limits

Vision Zero suggests the following "possible long term maximum travel speeds related to the infrastructure, given best practice in vehicle design and 100% restraint use". These speeds are based on human and automobile limits. For example, the human tolerance for a pedestrian hit by a well-designed car is approximately. If a higher speed in urban areas is desired, the option is to separate pedestrian crossings from the traffic. If not, pedestrian crossings, or zones, must be designed to generate speeds of a maximum of. Similarly, for occupants, the maximum inherent safe speed of well-designed cars can be anticipated to be a maximum of in frontal impacts, and in side impacts. Speeds over can be tolerated if the infrastructure is designed to prevent frontal and side impacts.
Type of infrastructure and trafficPossible travel speed
Locations with possible conflicts between pedestrians and cars
Intersections with possible side impacts between cars
Roads with possible frontal impacts between cars, including rural roads
Roads with no possibility of a side impact or frontal impact +

"Roads with no possibility of a side impact or frontal impact" are sometimes designated as Type 1, Type 2 or Type 3. These roadways have crash barriers separating opposing traffic, limited access, grade separation and prohibitions on slower and more vulnerable road users. Undivided rural roads can be quite dangerous even with speed limits that appear low by comparison. In 2010, German rural roads, which are generally limited to, had a fatality rate of 7.7 deaths per billion-travel-kilometers, higher than the 5.2 rate on urban streets, and far higher than the autobahn rate of 2.0; autobahns carried 31% of motorized road traffic while accounting for 11% of Germany's traffic deaths.
A movement to reduce speed limits in residential areas to called "20's Plenty for Us" or "20 is Plenty" started gathering steam in the early 2000's in the UK. It spread to the US in 2010.

Implementation

Canada

In December 2015, the Canadian injury prevention charity Parachute presented the Vision Zero concept, with Road Safety Strategist Matts Belin of Sweden, to nearly 100 road safety partners.
In November 2016, Parachute hosted a one-day national road safety conference focused on Vision Zero goals and strategies, attended by leaders in health, traffic engineering, police enforcement, policy and advocacy.
From that, the Parachute Vision Zero Network was formed, comprising more than 250 road safety advocates and practitioners, law enforcement, government and municipalities. The network serves to provide a one-stop Canadian destination to connect these stakeholders with one other, and with information and resources to help communities address road safety challenges, using proven solutions.
The second Parachute Vision Zero Summit was held in October 2017, attended by network members and politicians, including Ontario Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca.
Another organization, Vision Zero Canada launched their national campaign in December 2015.
Efforts in Canadian cities:
In the Netherlands, the sustainable safety approach differs from Vision Zero in that it acknowledges that in the majority of accidents humans are to blame, and that roads should be designed to be "self-explaining" thus reducing the likelihood of crashes. Self-explaining roads are easy to use and navigate, it being self-evident to road users where they should be and how they should behave. The Dutch also prevent dangerous differences in mass, speeds and/or directions from mixing. Roundabouts create crossings on an otherwise 50 or road that are slow enough,, to permit pedestrians and cyclists to cross in safety. Mopeds, cyclists and pedestrians are kept away from cars on separate paths above in the built up area. Buses are also often given dedicated lanes, preventing their large mass from conflicting with low mass ordinary cars.
More recently the Dutch have introduced the idea that roads should also be "forgiving", i.e. designed to lessen the outcome of a traffic collision when the inevitable does occur, principles which are at the core of both the Dutch and Swedish policies.

Sweden

In 1997 the Swedish Parliament introduced a "Vision Zero" policy that requires that fatalities and serious injurious are reduced to zero by 2020. This is a significant step change in transport policy at the European level. All new roads are built to this standard and older roads are modified.. Vision Zero also incorporated other countermeasures targeting drivers and vehicles. It is worth noting that Sweden road toll was declining prior to 1997 and continued to do so under Vision Zero. However the number of deaths has not improved since 2013.
source Eurostat

United Kingdom

Transport appraisal in the United Kingdom is based on New Approach to Appraisal which was first published in 1998 and updated in 2007. UK road safety plans have some similarities with Vision Zero, but do not specifically adopt it in the UK. In 2006 the Stockholm Environment Institute wrote a report at the request of the UK Department for Transport titled 'Vision zero: Adopting a Target of Zero for Road Traffic Fatalities and Serious Injuries'. In 2008 the Road Safety Foundation published a report proposing on UK road safety which referenced Vision Zero. The Campaign for Safe Road Design is a partnership between 13 UK major road safety stakeholders that is calling for the UK Government to invest in a safe road infrastructure which in their view could cut deaths on British roads by 33%. In 2007 Blackpool was the first British City to declare a vision zero target. In 2014 Brighton & Hove adopted vision zero in its 'Safer Roads' strategy, predicated on the safe systems approach, alongside the introduction of an ISO accredited road traffic safety management system to ISO:39001. Edinburgh adopted a Road Safety Action Plan: Working Towards Vision Zero in May 2010 which "commits to providing a safe and modern road network where all users are safe from the risk of being killed or seriously injured". Northern Ireland's DOE has a Share the road to zero" policy for zero deaths. Bristol adopted a safe systems approach in March 2015. Transport For London say they are working towards zero KSI. UK Vision Zero campaigns include Vision Zero London and Vision Zero UK. A Vision Zero UK all day conference is planned for 19 January 2016 at Camden Town Hall with Landor LINKS conferences. On 5th June 2019, a public consultation on imposing a 20mph speed limit on all central London roads, which are managed by Transport for London, was launched and it will close on 10th July 2019.

United States (cities/regions/states)

EuroRAP

Across Europe EuroRAP, the European Road Assessment Programme is bringing together a partnership of motoring organisations, vehicle manufacturers and road authorities to develop protocols for identifying and communicating road accident risk and to develop tools and best practice guidelines for engineering safer roads. EuroRAP aims to support governments in meeting their Vision Zero targets.
The "Roadmap to a Single European Transport Area" issued in 2011 by the European Commission states in point 2.5 :
"By 2050, move close to zero fatalities in road transport. In line with this goal, the EU
aims at halving road casualties by 2020."

United Nations

The United Nations has more modest goals. Its "Decade of Action for Road Safety" is founded on a goal to "stabilize and then reduce" road traffic fatalities by 2020. It established the Road Safety Fund "to encourage donor, private sector and public support for the implementation of a Global Plan of Action.

Outcomes

Despite some countries borrowing some ideas from the Vision Zero project, it has been noted that the richer countries have been making outstanding progress in reducing traffic deaths while the poorer countries tend to see an increase in traffic fatalities due to increased motorization. Some locales have seen divergent results between the number of accidents and injuries on the one hand, and the number of deaths; in the first four years of the plan's implementation in New York City, for example, traffic injuries and traffic crashes have been increasing, though deaths have decreased.
Country1980 Killed2013 Killed2013/1980 percent2013 Killed per million Population2013 Killed per 100 Billion Vehicle Kilometers
Australia3,2721,18536.251496
Austria2,00345522.754583
Belgium2,39672330.265707
Canada5,4622,25541.365
Czech Republic1,26165552.9621,573
Denmark69019127.734386
Finland55125846.848476
France13,6363,26824.051
Germany15,0503,33922.241460
Greece1,44687460.479
Hungary1,63059136.360
Ireland56419033.741396
Italy9,2203,38536.757
Japan11,3885,15245.240694
Luxembourg984545.984
Netherlands1,99647623.828374
Norway36218751.737426
Poland6,0023,35755.987
Portugal2,85063723.461
Slovenia55812522.461
South Korea6,4495,09279.01011,720
Spain6,5221,68025.736
Sweden84826030.727337
Switzerland1,20926922.233429
United Kingdom6,1821,77028.628348
United States51,09132,71964.0104680

Norway

Norway adopted its version of Vision Zero in 1999. In 2008, a staff engineer at the Norwegian Public Roads Administration said "The zero vision has drawn more attention to road safety, but it has not yielded any significant short-term gains so far."

Sweden

Sweden, which initiated Vision Zero, has had somewhat better results than Norway. With a population of about 9.6 million, Sweden has a long tradition in setting quantitative road traffic safety targets. In the mid-1990s a 10-year target was set at a 50% reduction for 2007. This target was not met; the actual ten-year reduction was 13% to 471 deaths. The target was revised to 50% by 2020 and to 0 deaths by 2050. In 2009 the reduction from 1997 totals was 34.5% to 355 deaths.
Accident YearFatalities
1997541
1998531
1999580
2000591
2001583
2002532
2003529
2004480
2005440
2006445
2007471
2008396
2009355
2010266
2011319
2012285
2013260
2014270
2015259
2016270
2017253

Traffic volume in Sweden increased steadily over the same period.

Dominican Republic

Vision Zero has influenced other countries, such as the Dominican Republic. The country, despite having the deadliest traffic in the world, has managed to get to a point where only forty Dominicans die per 100,000 Dominicans each year by following a set of guidelines based on the similar goal of reducing traffic fatalities.