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Claes Tingvall, Dr Med Sc, Professor
Director of Traffic Safety, Swedish National Road Administration and Monash University Accident Research Centre, Australia
Co-authors Matts-Ake Belin, Roger Johansson, Anders Lie SNRA
The history of traffic safety is long and has had many directions and strategies as tools for improvement of the situation. While countermeasures has been directed towards all parts of the system, the general approach has been to put the responsibilities for road accidents and their consequences on the individual road user. Investments have been mainly introduced on the basis that they are cost effective, in that the return on the invested money has been bigger than the investment. This is contrasting to the general philosophy in the society, where actions are based on the desire of the citizens to tackle problems and especially those that pose a threat to life and health. Although it seems logical to choose countermeasures that are cost effective, the question if they should be put in place or not are normally a political question, or a question of fulfilling obligations to regulation or other expectations.
The road transport system is an open system with a variety of stakeholders. These stakeholders represent both organizations that are driven by political or ideological issues, as well as those driven by commercial and market forces. They are by other words driven by a variety of motives, not only what is cost efficient. Regulation has been put on some of them, and in same aspects, but in general very few have got an obligation in a broader sense to protect life and health in the road transport system.
While it is important that individual road users are motivated to follow, and obey, basic rules of the road transport system, it is easy to classify the road transport system as an ill functioning man machine interface. Small errors can lead to fatalities and serious injuries. Due to the enormous impact in terms of health losses to the citizens, it should be normal to look for organizational and systems oriented actions to protect the citizens rather than concentrating only on the behavior of the individual. This does not by any means lift the burden from the individual to follow rules, but should also put a high demand on those that are responsible to modify the system. In order to have a common understanding of driving forces to change among a variety of stakeholders, a vision of what the future should look like could be helpful, if not necessary.
A vision is an image of a future situation and its qualities. It is a way to assemble individuals, organizations and a whole society around an idea of a direction into the future. In road safety, it is an image of the future in terms of the qualities of the road transport system. It is not likely, and perhaps not desired, to be a full-scale model of what it exactly looks like, but rather the qualities for the different components of the system and how they interact. It is also a tool for a democratic society where citizens can relate to long term values and get involved in the way they are fulfilled.
In the road transport system, with so many stakeholders, a vision is probably more useful than elsewhere. The nature of the situation, where stakeholders gradually and over a very long period of time should improve components and interfaces of the system is an important ingredient in the importance of a vision. This is a contrast to a future that is planned and regulated.
A vision will also allow stakeholders to develop subsystems in their own, but still knowing they will contribute to the vision. It is also of major importance, that while gradual improvement is essential, it is easier to understand what is the long-term sustainable solution. While safety has been improved, it is likely that the majority of costs are spent on modifying what has already been modified before . If things had been done right already from the beginning, we might have saved time and money to spend on new items and solutions.
A vision is not an action plan, and will thereby allow stakeholders to work out how they can fulfill the visions with their own overriding motives in relation to the citizens. Possible conflicts and synergies with other motives and goals can also be worked out at an earlier stage, thereby avoiding conflicts and gain support from other areas and aspects of the road transport system.
The elements of a vision for the safety of the road transport system are important to base on the problem description. While most emphasis has been put on the responsibility for the individual road user, it is the professional society that would have to develop the system to be sustainable. A vision should therefore focus on the future on the entire system, and how the professional society would take onboard the responsibilities for creating such a vision.
The vision should also include human values, the relation to the citizens and what the driving forces to change are. A vision should also give a direction for how possible conflicts with other benefits and drawbacks of the road transport system should be handled. While safety is a core quality of the road transport system, mobility is the functionality. This functionality should be defined further to allow a vision for the quality to be developed. In the end the vision should allow the citizens to have a sustainable mobility.
The road transport system is without doubt a poor functioning man/machine system. The citizens have good motives for staying alive and healthy, but are not given the possibility to travel from A to B in a way that is safe. Although the risks for the individual is moderate seen over a short period, on the society level and over time the road transport system generates major public health problems. In most of the developed countries, up to approximately five percent of the population will either get killed or lose their health for a long period of time.
While it can be seen, that the users of the system is not behaving in a way that is desired, even well motivated people following in general rules are at risk. A small proportion of the population is obviously acting in a way that is criminal, and pose high risk to themselves and others, but they are hardly the core part of the health problem. In general, most citizens should be seen as normal people, with all their faults but also skills and good motives. A safe system should accommodate such a population and help it to stay alive.
While the vast majority, if not all crashes with health losses are results of human failure and even breaking rules, the link between the action of the user and the resulting loss of life and health is not fair. Even minor misjudgments and errors might lead to a serious outcome, and while the error would be seen as minor if there was no crash or no injuries, the fact that it led to a major health loss is sometimes seen as the magnitude of the error. It seems, as if it is the outcome that drives the moral standpoint of someone's faults.
There are, however, other systems and environments in the society that handles great risk that are tolerant to errors and misjudgments and even violations. The power supply system is an example of a man machine interface that is well functioning.
There are a few hypothesizes that might explain why the road transport system has developed into this situation. First of all, there is a historical explanation in that the society in the early stages of the road transport system put the legal and moral burden on the individual user. Unlike other publicly or professionally used systems, there is none legally responsible for the safety of the whole system.
In the road transport system, there is also a tradition to balance health to the benefits of the system. Life and health is as a result a part of the equation to provide the society with a good mobility, rather than being a limitation of the mobility. This has been possible as the legal responsibility is mainly put on the user, and the collective investments are only beneficial if the return of investment is higher than investment itself. This is not a common way to handle man machine systems that most people are forced to use.
If a problem analysis would lead us into, that the road users are victims of an ill functioning man machine system, even if we can see that much of the problems arise from road users not using the system according to rules, the responsibility for modifying the system will fall on the professional society. While the road users cannot change the system on their own, just be a part of the change, the designers and providers of the components of the system must take on the task to change the safety within the system. Such a task should be based on human values and a long-term vision for what will be delivered to the citizen.
It is logical, that while if the responsibility for life and health will fall on the road user, actions to improve the safety will be balanced to benefits. It is equally logical, that if the responsibility for creating life and health for the citizen is put on the professional society the consequence is quite different. In that case protection of life and health becomes paramount. It is not likely that a professional body in the society can negotiate with the citizens on a rational basis to provide a balance between life and health and benefits, which would mean that the individuals right to life and health is negotiated with the benefits of the collective in the same system. Therefore, a human value approach to safety is logical as well.
It is equally logical that the responsibility chain is modified. The responsibility for providing the citizen with a safe system will be the role of the professional society, as well as making sure that the road users are responsible for acting in a safe way.
The definition of a safe system is based on what health issues that are focussed, and under which conditions it is safe. While a fatality is the ultimate loss of health, there are also a number of injuries that will, or can lead to serious health losses. The conditions under which the system is safe could me more complicated in theory, but will have minor implications on how the vision is turned into reality. While some would probably claim, that a vision of a safe system could only apply to road users that would follow certain rules and have certain vehicles, the road transport system does not allow anyone to travel under his or her own premises. If the system would, as an example only apply to sober road users, drunk drivers pose a high risk to other road users. The system would therefore protect other road users from drunk drivers, which in turn would not exclude the drunk drivers from the vision of a safe system. Therefore, there is little point in excluding anyone from the vision. From an ethical viewpoint this would be even more complicated.
A safe system would have to be based on some safety philosophy, otherwise it would be meaningless as a guiding tool for the professional society. It would without doubt have to be based on a systems approach.
Vision Zero was launched as a political initiative in the late nineties. The vision states that none should be either killed or seriously injured by the road transport system. The content of the vision was taken by the Swedish Parliament in October 1997. The vision is based on four main elements; ethics, responsibility, scientific approach and driving mechanisms for change.
In terms of ethics, the main element is that life and health in the long run cannot be traded of to benefits of the road transport system. The consequence of this is that mobility gradually will become a function of safety. This is an approach that is well known from the occupational health and safety area.
The responsibility chain has been changed in a way that it is the system providers that are ultimately responsible for the inherent safety of the system. It is the users responsibility to follow rules. But if the users are not doing what is expected, the responsibility falls back on the system providers. A new body has been installed that has the role to overlook if this chain is working. While the responsibility chain is not given a legal status at this point, it is understood that it is a principle among all stakeholders. It should be understood that this chain of responsibility would give legitimacy for the system providers to enforce or restrict the road user heavily.
The safety philosophy has two elements. The first is that the design of the road transport system should be based on the failing human. Infrastructure, vehicles, speed limits, enforcement etc should all be based on that the human is likely to make mistakes, but that these mistakes should not lead to a health loss. It is at the same time a guide for the actions taken to motivate and enforce that the road users are following certain rules. These are mainly those areas that the rest of the system will be based on. These are mainly speed compliance, seat belt use (and other protective devices like helmets) and drivers being sober.
The other basic element of the safety philosophy is that the system should be based on the human tolerance to mechanical force. This is the limiting factor of the entire road transport system. While this limiting factor is in the end linked to kinetic energy, it is important to stress that prevention all the time should include the whole chain of events that lead up to a health loss. With this it should be understood that all possible harmful events should be exposed to the whole variety of methods to prevent, from drivers access to the road transport system to occupant protection in a crash.
The limiting factor being related to kinetic energy and biomechanics of the human is also an explanation to why speed, restraint use and being sober are key elements of road user behavior. This is also why it would be of help to support such behavior also by technical systems, as the are so crucial to the design of the rest of the system.
The fourth element of vision zero is the driving forces to change. While it has been very much the society's suffering from costs, it has now following the logic behind responsibility the demand from the individual citizen that is the main driving force. It is therefore implicit that the professional society is supposed to deliver safety to the citizen individually and collectively. This delivery is as has been stated earlier possibly conditional on that the road user will take his or her responsibilities. The responsibility chain will though still lead to that these conditions will be removed if the citizen cannot or refuse to comply with rules and regulation
While a vision is an image of the desired future, it is expected to give input for the near future as well, especially in terms of new innovations that will meet the demand from a much higher expectation on sustainability and effectiveness. It is therefore of interest to see if there are any signs of such a development.
In Sweden, the vision zero has without doubt influenced the development of road safety. One of the most striking examples is the changed view on infrastructure design. While it has been a tradition that infrastructure design for safety should be related to accident prevention, it has now been turned over to injury prevention. In reality this means that roads are mainly designed to minimize injuries in a crash rather than avoiding them. This has led to a large mid barrier installation program on two and three lane roads with a reduction of fatal injuries on these roads of approximately 90%. This has been achieved to a cost that is at least ten times lower than earlier prevention programs.
The design of built up areas has also been changed, where it is now a policy that the actual speed in conflict spots should not be more than 30 km/h. Also outside built up areas, there is a new speed limit system being developed, where the speed limit in the long term will be linked to the crash protection level of the infrastructure. This approach is very close to the newly introduced rating system for infrastructure, called EURO/RAP.
Because the driving mechanism for change is related to the citizen's demand for safety, it is important that the quality level for products and services within the road transport system are transparent. Sweden has therefore been very active in promoting several rating systems like NCAP, RAP and also national systems like the rating systems for goods transport. These rating systems are meant to give credit to those stakeholders that invest in safety, and to make the citizen aware of both positive development as well as what can be considered to be optimal quality of products and services.
Both automotive industry and other commercial operators in the road transport system have reacted in a very positive way to these open quality assessments.
A recent development that is in line with the approach to professional responsibility is the OHS area, where the OHS regulations are applied to transport. Another positive development is the trend towards merging environmental sustainability with safety. Both quality systems as well as criteria like fuel consumption are well suited to support both safety and environment. This has strengthened the market for safety substantially, where also the Swedish National Road Administration (SNRA) has started to act as a good consumer of the road transport system in order to serve as a good example. Since a few years, SNRA has a purchasing policy for cars and rental cars as well as for heavy goods transport. Starting 2004, all trucks purchased by SNRA must have alcohol interlock, and 2005 all trucks used in operations related to SNRA must have this device. This is a very powerful strategy that will be used extensively to enhance quality and introduction of adequate technology that support safety.
In summary, it can be expected that a long term's vision for safety based on human values can play an important role in developing the road transport system. If the vision is combined with strong driving forces meant to deliver health to the individual citizen, most if not all stakeholders can relate to such a vision. This should be able to happen irrespective of the motives a stakeholder has, as all of them in one way or another are there to deliver a value to the wider community.
A shared vision should be based on a clear approach to the quality of the system, so that each stakeholder can understand the expectations. This could also be supported by openly present the level of quality that each stakeholder has reached and pointing out what would be the optimum quality.
The results so far of a strategy based on a vision are promising, although it should be stressed, that building a safe road transport system will always take a long time.