Safe System

The Traffic Safety Research journal has the overarching aim ‘to contribute to the global shift towards the Safe System within road transportationn’ (see Focus and scope).

Safe System (also known as Vision Zero in Sweden or Sustainable Safety in the Netherlands) has been ground-breaking in its strong ethical standpoint about zero tolerance to the fatalities and serious injuries in traffic. Rather than accepting severe accidents as the inevitable price to be paid for transport efficiency, Safe System sees them as preventable events, given the system designers have provided a sufficient amount of protection layers.

Safe System is nowadays acknowledged as the state-of-the-art within road traffic safety. However, on the practical implementation level (and, unfortunately, quite often within the research community) there are many erroneous interpretations and internal conflicts between the traditional way of doing things and the operational methods prescribed by the Safe System.

The question of how relevant a considered manuscript is within the Safe System discourse will re-appear during its submission, reviewing and, finally, in the decision by the editor about its acceptance or rejection. Therefore, regardless of your role (author, reviewer, editor), make sure that you are comfortable in your knowledge of the Safe System principles.

The recommended reading to get familiar with the topic includes:

• Edvardsson Björnberg, K., S. O. Hansson, M.-Å. Belin, C. Tingvall (eds.) (2023), The Vision Zero Handbook: Theory, Technology and Management for a Zero Casualty Policy (Cham, Switzerland: Springer), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76505-7

• Trafikverket (n.d.) ‘Vision Zero Academy’. The Swedish Transport Administration: https://bransch.trafikverket.se/en/startpage/operations/Operations-road/vision-zero-academy (Acc. 18 April 2022)

• ITF (2022) ‘The Safe System Approach in Action’. International Transport Forum, Paris: https://www.itf-oecd.org/safe-system-in-action

• ITF (2016) ‘Zero Road Deaths and Serious Injuries: Leading a Paradigm Shift to a Safe System’. International Transport Forum, Paris: https://doi.org/10.1787/9789282108055-en

• Larsson, P., C. Tingvall (2013) ‘The safe System Approach—A road Safety Strategy Based on Human Factors Principles’ in Harris, D. (Ed.) Engineering Psychology and Cognitive Ergonomics: Applications and Services. Proceedings of EPCE 2013, held as part of HCI International 2013, Las Vegas, USA. Part II. Springer Verlag, Berlin: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39354-9_3

• Johansson, R. (2009) ‘Vision Zero—implementing a policy for traffic safety’. Safety Science 47, 826–831: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2008.10.023

• ITF (2008) ‘Towards Zero. Ambitious road safety targets and the Safe System approach’. International Transport Forum, Paris: https://doi.org/10.1787/9789282101964-en