Vision Zero
Low urban speed-limits, pedestrian zones and barriers that separate cars from bikes and oncoming traffic have helped.
Building 1,500 kilometres (900 miles) of "2+1" roads—where each lane of traffic takes turns to use a middle lane for overtaking—is reckoned to have saved around 145 lives over the first decade of Vision Zero --Why Sweden has so few road deaths, The Economist Explains[4] (26 February 2014) 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.
Vision Zero changes this relationship by emphasizing that responsibility is shared by transportation system designers and road users.
[5] 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".
[7][8] If a higher speed in urban areas is desired, the option is to separate pedestrian crossings from the traffic.
[18] 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.
[19] From that, the Parachute Vision Zero Network was formed, comprising more than 250 road safety advocates and practitioners, law enforcement, government and municipalities.
[20] 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.
[21] The second Parachute Vision Zero Summit was held in October 2017, attended by network members and politicians, including Ontario Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca.
[23] 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.
In February 2022, Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency and the New Zealand Police launched a public awareness campaign to promote Road to Zero.
It is worth noting that Sweden's road death toll was declining prior to 1997 and continued to do so under Vision Zero.
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'.
It established the Road Safety Fund "to encourage donor, private sector and public support for the implementation of a Global Plan of Action.
[4] 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.
"[100] Traffic fatalities in Norway has nevertheless continued to decline as time has passed by, and 2020 marked the important milestone of being the first year in Norwegian history to see fewer than 100 road fatalities; 95 people died on Norwegian roads that year.
With a population of about 9.6 million, Sweden has a long tradition in setting quantitative road traffic safety targets.
