Vision Zero is a multi-national road traffic safety project which aims to achieve a highway system with no fatalities or serious injuries in road traffic. It started in Sweden and was approved by their parliament in October 1997.[1] 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 how much risk.
Vision Zero is based on four principles:[3]
Ethics: Human life and health are paramount and take priority over mobility and other objectives of the road traffic system
Responsibility: providers and regulators of the road traffic system share responsibility with users;
Safety: road traffic systems should take account of human fallibility and minimize both the opportunities for errors and the harm done when they occur; and
Mechanisms for change: providers and regulators must do their utmost to guarantee the safety of all citizens; they must cooperate with road users; and all three must be ready to change to achieve safety.
Other principles were added to Vision Zero in order to ensure that motorists would comprehend the full extent of the movements purpose:[4]
Traffic deaths and injuries are preventable; therefore, none are acceptable.
·People will make mistakes; the transportation system should be designed so those mistakes aren’t fatal.
·Safety is the primary consideration in transportation decision-making.
Traffic safety solutions must be addressed holistically.
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”.[5] 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 30 km/h. 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 (or vehicles), must be designed to generate speeds of a maximum of 30 km/h. Similarly, the inherent safety of well-designed cars can be anticipated to be a maximum of 70 km/h in frontal impacts, and 50 km/h in side impacts. Speeds over 100 km/h can be tolerated if the infrastructure is designed to prevent frontal and side impacts.
