|
|
For presentation at Kick-off Meeting for Halving Road Deaths, Tokyo, November 2003
Richard E Allsop
Centre for Transport Studies
University College London
For those with a professional involvement in or a political commitment to road safety, it is always exciting to hear of new national initiatives - and it is especially exciting to hear of an ambitious initiative in a country with a history of remarkable achievement in road safety, and with great potential regional influence.
So it is exciting to be able to take part in the kick-off meeting for Japan's new initiative to halve road deaths - and to halve them from a level of 75 road deaths (within 30 days of the accident) per million person-years, which lies between the third and fourth lowest in Europe. The European participants come to share experiences in the common endeavour to reduce death and injury on the roads, not only because some experiences in North-western Europe may be relevant to Japan, but also because some experiences in Japan may be relevant to Europe.
Figure 1 Annual numbers of deaths within 24 hours of the accident on the roads of Japan from 1950 to 2002 |
In common with many industrialised countries, Japan achieved in the early 1970s a reversal of the relentless year-on-year growth in the number of deaths on the road that had prevailed since the early 1950s. But the reversal in Japan came a year or two sooner than in most other countries, and clearly before the oil price perturbations of 1973-74. Moreover, the subsequent decrease achieved in Japan was much more rapid than in European countries, so that deaths in Japan were halved in less than 10 years, whereas in Great Britain, for example, this took well over 20 years from the downturn to achieve.
Japan's achievement in the 1970s was followed with great interest in Europe and was a source of inspiration and encouragement to those concerned with road safety in European countries. But accordingly the subsequent levelling off and temporary regrowth of the annual number of deaths on the roads in Japan were watched with anxiety from Europe, lest this indicated that progress in European countries towards their first halvings of the annual numbers of deaths might also be followed by a period of levelling off or even regrowth. Indeed, this possibility confronts a number of countries in North-western Europe which have recently achieved their first halvings in deaths, and the one which is well on its way to its second halving. Perhaps these countries can learn something from Japan's new initiative for a second halving in road deaths to help them to maintain their own progress beyond the levels of road deaths they have reached so far. In particular, with their ageing populations, European countries may well be able to learn from the great attention being given to the safety of elderly people on the roads in Japan.
Road safety professionals and committed advocates of road safety know that the numbers of road deaths can be halved again, in Japan and in Europe alike - and indeed probably halved again after that. They know that it makes overwhelming socio-economic sense to do what is needed to halve road deaths, even though this means decision-makers diverting some resources from other attractive objectives, and people and businesses accepting some modest changes in the way they use the roads from day to day. And the basis for this claim is not some marginal or debatable balance of advantage, but a massive excess of benefit from reduced human suffering and material loss over modest cost in terms of resources invested and change accepted.
But those who need to be convinced are decision-makers, stakeholders and the public. The decision-makers and stakeholders, ranging from the national to the very local level in both the public and the private sectors, all have their own different agenda, among which reducing death and injury on the roads may not rank particularly highly. And the public do not realise how bad the problem is, because road death is rare and remote in the experience of most individuals. Nor do they realise how much better it could be made. They are therefore unready to change, however modestly, let alone to press their politicians for change. This is the challenge to change minds.
To change minds, all levels of society need to be made to confront the scandal of tolerance of current levels of death and injury on the roads. The main ways in which people can harm themselves and each other in everyday life as individuals in public places (that is aside from organised crime, commercial or political exploitation, or violence within the home) in Japan and Europe today are the following.
Misuse of guns - which is scarcely tolerated at all
Behaviour that spreads disease - which evokes very low levels of tolerance and a strong demand for countermeasures
Crime against the person and against property - which evokes low levels of tolerance and high demand for countermeasures among better-off people, but may be more widely tolerated by some of the less well-off under the social and personal pressures of relative poverty and deprivation and lack of opportunities to earn a living legally
Misuse of substances - for which there is a wide range of levels of tolerance and different attitudes to countermeasures - attitudes which have changed substantially in either direction within a generation (for example in relation to alcohol, tobacco and cannabis)
Misuse of motor vehicles - for which there is widespread tolerance and only selective demand or support for countermeasures
Only the misuse of substances affects life and health on a comparable scale to misuse of motor vehicles, and there is almost certainly greater knowledge how to reduce these effects in the case of motor vehicles, if only the level of tolerance can be reduced (Allsop in Koornstra et al 2002, Appendix A).
Society also needs to be persuaded that the direct consequence of delay or failure in implementing known and affordable measures to reduce death and injury is giving away lives and condemning badly injured survivors to lifelong disability - contrary to the principle of respect for the preciousness of human life which is central to Japan's Fundamental Traffic Safety Programme (Central Traffic Safety Policy Council 2001).
It would be inconceivable for a health minister to announce that an inexpensive new treatment for cancer that would save 50 lives per year among mid-life patients had been found, but that it would not be made available through the national healthcare system. It would be similarly inconceivable for directors of a pharmaceutical company to be told how to reduce by 20 per cent certain very occasional fatal side-effects of a widely used and beneficial company product at an increase in price that is within the noise of year-on-year inflation, and then decide not to improve the product in this way.
Yet one European road safety minister has recently done the equivalent of the first, and car manufacturers have been doing the equivalent of the second for a decade, until the splendid and pathbreaking initiative of a Japanese company in 2001 in designing substantial pedestrian protection into a new high-selling model. A climate of opinion needs to be created in which decisions like these would be reported in the media for what they are - giving away people's lives - so that Ministers and companies would come under fire for failure to implement measures, instead of being criticised for trying to implement them, as is often the case at present.
When advocates of road safety measures are accused of limiting some people's freedom to use their vehicles on the roads, they can clearly and confidently respond that those who oppose safety measures are limiting everyone's freedom to use the roads without fear of untimely death or disablement.
Changing minds in this way means gaining greater attention for the problem of death and injury on the roads in societies in which many other problems are also calling for attention. For this purpose it is necessary to show not only that the gains from halving road deaths sufficiently exceed the cost to society of doing so, but also that the particular problem of these deaths ought to have higher priority than it has been given so far. A convincing answer is needed to the question: about a million people die in Japan every year - what is so special about these 10,000 who die on the roads? The answer is in four parts:
These arguments have been stated in terms of deaths, but they extend directly to serious injury and the resulting long term disability, which is in some cases so severe as to call into question whether death is the worst outcome of road accidents - for the victims themselves, for their associates or for society.
When advocates of road safety measures are accused of disproportionate concern, they can clearly and confidently respond that it is the risk people face when using the roads that is disproportionate.
Changing minds sufficiently to produce a strongly felt and lasting motivation for change that is sufficient to root out and overcome the prevailing deepseated tolerance of disproportionate numbers of people being killed or injured on the roads can be helped by promoting an inspiring vision or practical philosophy of safer road use, perhaps under the leadership of an influential person or group of people. To achieve the necessary change in the minds of decision-makers and stakeholders, the vision or philosophy needs to be far-reaching and long term, looking well beyond what is immediately achievable (OECD 2002).
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 5 or 10 years. There need, however, be no contradiction between a far-reaching long-term vision or philosophy and a challenging yet achievable, and thus necessarily more modest, shorter-term strategy for the foreseeable future. If properly communicated and understood, both the ultimate vision or philosophy and a strategy for the next foreseeable steps towards it can serve their respective purposes side by side (ETSC 2003).
Probably the best known vision for road safety is the Vision Zero adopted in 1997 by the Parliament of Sweden:
"The long-term goal … that nobody will be killed or seriously injured as a result of a traffic accident within the road transport system" (Ministry of Transport and Communications Sweden 1997).
There can be little doubt that at a time when the risk of death or injury when using the roads (even in those countries where it has been most successfully reduced so far, including Japan) is so disproportionately high compared with the risk of other everyday activities, the Vision Zero has been an inspiration to all workers for road safety to set their sights high, to keep up the pressure on decision-makers for more rapid and determined implementation of known measures to reduce death and injury on the roads, to motivate researchers to develop new measures, and to ward off any tendency to settle for soft options or to start to acquiesce in existing levels of risk. It has been adopted by a number of European countries, either explicitly or in the form of statements such as
"Death and injuries in traffic are unacceptable - each accident is one too many" (National Commission for Road Safety Denmark 2000).
This is the one European vision that matches the Japanese Fundamental Traffic Safety Programmme's
"ultimate goal of total prevention of traffic accidents and traffic casualties" (Central Traffic Safety Policy Council 2001),
while other countries adopting the Vision Zero, including Sweden itself, accept the continued occurrence of traffic accidents, including ones that give rise to slight injury.
But not all European countries accept the Vision Zero. The author has pointed out (Allsop 2002) that there are limits to the costs that it is reasonable to incur or impose in order to protect against risks in road traffic when there are many other pressing calls upon resources, including opportunities to save lives and reduce suffering elsewhere in society. This is also recognised in the road safety programme for Finland (Ministry of Transport and Communications Finland 2001), even though its starting point is the Vision Zero. The author has also pointed out that society accepts risk of death and injury in the course of beneficial activity in other areas of life, and people are unlikely to be willing to forego freedom in using the roads to the extent that would be needed to eliminate all risk of death or serious injury in doing so.
People using the roads have the right to be protected from other people's errors and irresponsibility. They also have the right to be informed and advised how to reduce risk, and to expect known and affordable measures to be taken to protect them from their own errors. But the resulting safety is not an end in itself - its purpose is to allow people to exercise their more basic right to live their lives to the full, even when this means taking some risks. Safety is for living, and living is much more than just staying safe.
This is not only a matter of philosophy: it also has practical implications for road safety policy. Because use of the roads is such an intrinsic part of the lives that people want to be free to live, policies and measures that affect use of the roads have to gain and retain the acceptance of the vast majority of the people if they are to be implemented. This is true even of policies and measures that will manifestly reduce death and serious injury. If the Vision Zero is accepted as a long term basis for road safety policy, and substantial progress is made towards it, then possibly within 10 years and almost certainly within 20 years, policies and measures are likely to come up against the limits of public acceptability in terms of limitations on freedom to use the roads. And to try to overstep these limits would be to risk losing a good deal of the ground that had been gained up to that point.
It is for reasons of this kind that the Vision Zero is not accepted as a basis for road safety policy in Great Britain, where the Government's Commission for Integrated Transport has recently had commended to it the more pragmatic vision of
"reducing the risk of death per hour spent using the roads to the average risk of death while engaging in other everyday activities"
The idea of a road safety strategy, that is a plan of action to implement risk-reducing measures for the foreseeable future, typically for the next 5 to 10 years, is a familiar one in Japan, because Japan has had 5-yearly road safety strategies since the early 1970s. It is nevertheless worth recalling the rationale and mechanism for adopting a road safety strategy, and the advantages to be expected from doing so.
Reducing the number of road deaths and injuries in practice requires a wide range of people and interests to act cohesively in many different ways which interact strongly and need to reinforce one another. This is the challenge to work together.
Professional and ethical responsibility for road safety is spread widely over many kinds of people in a range of commercial, professional, governmental and community organisations. Some of these, like road safety engineers and officers, have duties defined explicitly in road safety terms. Others, like highway and traffic engineers and bus drivers, have roles that are defined in other ways but have quite obvious road safety implications. Yet others, like architects, town planners, teachers and doctors, may not realise how much their activities can influence road safety unless this is brought to their attention by suitable advice or training.
Different kinds of action to improve road safety are interdependent in many ways: the engineering of the roads and of the vehicles need to be compatible, and both need to be compatible with the capabilities, limitations and behavioural characteristics of the road users. Different kinds of action also compete for resources, most explicitly in the allocation of government expenditure and in management decisions in business, but also in individuals' decisions about their use of time and money for travel and for vehicle ownership and maintenance.
Some aspects of this interdependence and competition are naturally recognised and addressed by those concerned, but this does not necessarily happen to an extent that is commensurate with the scale of avoidable death, injury and damage in road accidents, because it may not be in the interests of the people and organisations concerned. The range of people and interests involved and the complexity of the interdependencies and tradeoffs in use of resources are such that a more systematic approach is called for in order to address the challenge to work together.
The value of setting the whole range of road safety action in the context of a strategy lies not only in the existence, and the real prospect of successful implementation, of a coherent programme of concerted action of all kinds, but also in the effects on the stakeholders of being challenged to work together by being fully involved in the process of formulating the strategy and keeping it up to date.
This process, if it is so conducted as to achieve the full involvement of all those who can contribute to making use of the roads safer, can deliver:
Because road safety action is typically a highly cost effective use of resources, it can be helpful to make this explicit by attributing monetary values to the reduction in risk required to save one (unknown) person from death, from serious injury or from slight injury (see e g Evans 2001). In doing this, it is important to be clear that it is not particular people's lives or suffering that are being valued, but the reduction in risk to everyone that is required to prevent death or injury. Making this cost-effectiveness explicit in the strategy should lead to greater allocation of resources to it, and thus to more action, than would be the case in the absence of a strategy. Systematic consideration of interdependencies within the strategy and the enhanced motivation and commitment of the contributors in response to the challenge to work together should make the action more effective. Ranking in terms of cost effectiveness should make the sum total of affordable action more cost effective. The strategic approach should thus lead to more action, more effective action and more cost-effective action to improve road safety
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. Such a sound relationship between targets and measures can be reached by stakeholders either first agreeing on the measures and then deducing matching targets, or first deciding on targets and then finding a set of measures that makes the targets achievable, or, probably most typically, by a subtle mixture of these two approaches.
It matters little just what mixture of the two approaches is used, so long as the process leads to the agreed measures and associated targets being mutually consistent and gaining the ownership and commitment of all the affected stakeholders. In this process it is also 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.
It is of course possible simply to choose targets in the form of appealingly low numbers of casualties or levels of risk without prior consideration of just how they might be achieved. However, unless targets chosen in this way can be matched quickly by practical strategies for their achievement, these targets act rather as aspirational substitutes for a vision or philosophy than as a tool for motivating and monitoring the implementation of a particular road safety strategy. Moreover, once such aspirational targets have been set, it can become difficult subsequently to set more modest interim targets in relation to a specific safety strategy without creating apparent contradiction and consequent confusion (ETSC 2003).
Well-set targets provide a basis for quantitative monitoring of progress in implementation over the duration of the strategy, helping all stakeholders to benefit from experience as it is gained, and to adapt the strategy to changing circumstances. Achievement ahead of target in some respects can point to greater opportunities than were foreseen, whilst falling behind target in other respects can draw attention to unexpected difficulties and the need to reallocate resources. European experience in the setting and use of road safety targets has recently been summarised by the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC 2003).
The fact that Japan has had successive road safety strategies since the early 1970s, the current one comprising Chapter 1 of Part 1 of the cross-modal Fundamental Traffic Safety Programme for the years 2001-2005 (Central Traffic Safety Policy Council 2001), raises the question why the annual number of deaths increased between 1980 and 1992, and what more may be needed to maintain and accelerate the decrease which has been achieved since 1992.
It would hardly be proper for a guest who has spent no more than a couple of months in Japan in 25 years to venture to answer this question. It may, however, be useful to set out some related issues to help to stimulate creative discussion during this kick-off meeting and the follow-up to it.
Chapter 1 of Part 1 of the Fundamental Traffic Safety Programme is formidably comprehensive. It is hard to think of any measure or policy that might improve road safety consistently with continued high levels of car ownership and use that is not either explicitly or implicitly included. In contrast to the Netherlands or British model of a road safety strategy forming a component of an integrated transport policy, the Japanese programme seems almost to be a comprehensive road transport policy built upon the objective of reducing death and injury.
The result is that alongside what may be called front-line measures and policies that aim very directly to reduce death and injury (such as treating high-risk sites by road safety engineering, reducing vehicle speeds in residential areas, improving protection offered by vehicles in crashes, helping elderly people to adjust to their changing situation as road users safely and improving rescue services for the injured), there are other, what may be called supportive, measures whose casualty-reducing effect, though clear in principle, is less direct, and may well be modest (such as bus priority measures and cycle parking facilities), and some whose relevance to casualty reduction might even be seen as tenuous.
This seems to create scope for hard-pressed stakeholders to be able to feel that they are contributing strongly to the safety programme, when in fact their efforts, substantial in themselves, are in areas that can yield only modest casualty reductions.
It seems to be worth considering whether a clearer focus on direct casualty reduction might be achieved by structuring the next fundamental traffic safety programme so as to distinguish clearly between front-line casualty-reducing policies and measures on the one hand, and wider supportive measures having potentially useful but more modest and less direct casualty-reducing effects on the other, and to emphasise priority for the front-line policies and measures.
The range of new and enhanced activities envisaged for national and local governments under the current Programme seems very ambitious in terms of the generality of the statements about what will be done, in terms of the skills and capabilities required and the likely cost, and in relation to the 5-year timescale of the Programme.
This seems to create scope for the motivation of hard-pressed authorities to be undermined by the variety and sheer extent of new demands upon their management capacity, human resources and budgets, resulting in their contribution to casualty reduction being less than it might be. It is also relevant to motivation that monetary values currently attributed in Japan to prevention of death or injury are low compared with those used in a number of OECD countries.
It seems worth considering whether the next fundamental traffic safety programme might more explicitly set out the demands upon human resources and budgets implied by the envisaged activity, and how national and local governments are expected to make these resources and budgets available and deliver the envisaged activity within the period of the programme (whether that be 5 years or longer) - thus making for a more clearly achievable programme, even if perhaps at first sight a less ambitious one. The same might also apply to activities which impose costs upon and require effort by business or non-governmental organisations. It might also be timely to review the monetary values attributed to prevention of death or injury. Creating the will in all quarters to allocate the necessary resources requires meeting the challenge to change minds.
A number of European countries, even including some of the smaller ones, have found one of the greatest challenges in implementing their road safety strategies to be to secure consistent delivery by local authorities over the whole period of the strategy of the contributions which those authorities accepted as being appropriate when the strategies were being drawn up. This stems in part from the democratic nature of the local government institutions, and in part from the number of different local authorities and their relative institutional independence from national government.
In terms of population, Japan is half as large again as the largest Western European country, and ten or more times the size of some of them. In such a large country, the potential difficulty of involving all the stakeholders fully in the development of each successive road safety strategy, gaining their ownership of it and maintaining their motivation throughout its duration, is probably more than proportionately greater than in smaller countries.
It therefore seems worth considering what scope there may be for achieving deeper involvement of the stakeholders in the formulation of the next fundamental traffic safety programme than may have been the case hitherto, and thus achieving a fuller sense of ownership of the programme by them, and a level of commitment which can more readily be maintained over its duration - in short, for addressing more fully the challenge to work together. The mechanisms that serve to achieve deeper involvement in formulating the programme may well be able to be kept in place for its duration to maintain commitment to its implementation.
The task of halving road deaths has been explored here as a challenge to all concerned to change minds and work together. Meeting this challenge is not a once-for-all task, but a continuing process in which the road safety strategy and its implementation are kept under review and regularly updated in the light of monitoring of changing circumstances and of progress towards targets. Deaths can be halved if enough people and interests are convinced that they want it to happen and are willing to work together to make it happen. Colleagues in Europe look forward to following progress in Japan and continuing to exchange experiences with their Japanese counterparts.
Allsop R E (2001) Road safety - willing the end and willing the means. Transport Research Foundation Fellowship Lecture, University College London, June 2001. Crowthorne: Transport Research Foundation
Allsop R E (2002) Road safety - Britain in Europe. 12th Westminster Lecture on Transport Safety, Westminster, December 2001. London: Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety
Central Traffic Safety Policy Council (2001) Fundamental Traffic Safety Program. Tokyo
ETSC (2003) Assessing Risk and Setting Targets in Transport Safety Programmes. Brussels: European Transport Safety Council
Evans A W (2001) Report from the United Kingdom. In: Economic evaluation of road traffic safety measures. ECMT Round Table 117, 77-99. Paris: OECD for European Conference of Ministers of Transport
Koornstra M, D Lynam, G Nilsson, P Noorzij, H-E Pettersson, F Wegman and P Wouters (2002) SUNflower: A comparative study of the development of road safety in Sweden, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Leidschendam: SWOW
Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (2001) Vital Statistics of Japan 2001. Tokyo
Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications (2001). Survey on Time Use and Leisure Activities. Tokyo
Ministry of Transport and Communications Sweden (1997) Vision Zero. Information Sheet. Stockholm
Ministry of Transport and Communications Finland (2001) Road Safety Programme 2001-2005. Helsinki
National Commission for Road Safety Denmark (2000) One accident is one too many. Copenhagen: Danish Road Directorate
OECD (2002) Safety on roads: what's the vision? Paris: Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
Traffic Bureau, National Police Agency (2003) Statistics 2002 - Road Accidents Japan. Tokyo: IATSS