THE SECOND GLOBAL INTERACTIVE
FORUM ON TRAFFIC & SAFETYEvent

"Vision Zero - A Scientific Based Traffic Injury Reducing Strategy in Sweden"
Ulf Björnstig
IATSS Overseas Fellow Senior Professor of Surgery, Department of Surgery/KBC, Umeå University

Vision Zero presents an image of desirable future society and does not accept traffic fatalities or serious injuries in the road traffic system. Vision Zero shifts the paradigm from avoiding accidents to reducing serious and fatal injuries and also acknowledges that both the designers of the transport system and the road users are responsible for traffic safety.

Vision Zero also examines the role of trauma energy, which had benefited from the findings of Dr. Hugh De Haven and Col. John Stapp, who found that the human body can withstand severe trauma given both a deceleration distance and a certain safety package and harness. Dr. Haddon later noted that traffic-related injuries are preventable, non-random events.

Looking at this risk of impact speeds, humans can survive severe impacts given the above mentioned factors. Therefore examining safe speeds and stopping distance can make the difference between life and death in traffic incidents. Responsibility for safe driving speeds falls on the shoulders of national and local traffic authorities. Effective measures such as speed bumps, speed cameras, etc. can play a role in mitigating risk. Eliminating roadside hazards, such as un-deformable light poles and damaging guard rails is another factor. EuroRAP plays a role in finding such roadside hazards in Sweden and Europe.

The prevention of frontal collisions is the responsibility of the system owners. Heavy vehicle to passenger car collisions are an increasing problem and 1/3 to 1/2 of all collision deaths are caused by such crashes. Trucks and buses kill five times as many people per kilometer driven as passenger cars do. Theoretically deformable fronts on trucks could reduce fatal injuries by 1/3, or 900 lives in Europe. Mid-barriers also play a role in reducing fatal frontal crashes as well. Today one fourth of all kilometers driven are on mid-separated roads. Raising awareness of seat belt use is also essential, as seat belt use reduces fatal injuries by 2/3. Drunk driving is a growing problem in Sweden. Alcohol and dangerous drugs was found in half of all fatally injured motor vehicle drivers in Sweden, a 24 percent increase from about 10 years ago.

Vision Zero faces various success and difficulty factors. A success factor is that Sweden’s former Transport Minister, Ines Uusmann, recognized these problems put forward by Claes Tingvall, a traffic safety director. In addition, Vision Zero was processed to a quick parliament decision in 1997. A difficulty in Vision Zero’s implementation was that road administration and other traffic authorities have felt left behind in the decision process – causing resistance at many levels.

In terms of traffic safety data, the number of traffic fatalities in Sweden has fallen from 440 in 2005 to 259 in 2015. Most non-fatal injuries treated at hospitals involve cyclists according to data from Umeå, a mid-sized city in Sweden. Although passenger car injuries have decreased, injured cyclists and pedestrians have not decreased.

The Swedish government has released Vision Zero 2.0 in September 2016, which focuses on vulnerable road users, preventing suicides in traffic, and crash avoidance systems. Multi-disciplinary cooperation at all levels engaging medicine, engineering, human factors etc. will make road traffic safe.

At first, Prof. Katsutoshi Ohta (IATSS Director / Professor Emeritus, the University of Tokyo) briefly introduced the presenters and laid out the schedule for the symposium.

"Creating a Road Safety Culture in GB: The Role of Political Leadership"
Nicola Christie
Director of Transport Institute, University College London

In 1987, the government of the UK set ambitious national casualty reduction targets, which were derived from national datasets from the police and hospitals. The target set out to reduce road casualties by one-third by the year 2000 in comparison to the average numbers for the years 1981 to 1985. These targets exceeded – fatalities were reduced by 39 percent and serious injuries were reduced by 45 percent. New targets were set in 1999, but they were removed in favor of the Strategic Framework for Road Safety 2011, which adopts a safe systems approach.

Fatalities have been greatly decreasing since 2005 in the UK. However, it is increasingly evident that certain vulnerable groups exist that are disproportionately affected by traffic accidents. Almost half of traffic deaths in the UK - a greater proportion than in Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands – are from vulnerable groups such as pedestrians, bicycles, and motorbikes. No single factor is driving road causalities. The distance people travel, the mix of transportation modes, the behaviors of drivers, riders, and pedestrians, and the mix of groups of people using the roads are several influences.

"Road Safety in India - Current Status"
Geetam Tiwari
Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) Chair Professor for Transport Planning, Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi

Unfortunately, road traffic deaths in India have been on the rise since the 1970s. One of the challenges in figuring out the reasons for these number is that the data can often differ widely and contradict each other.

In terms of RTI fatality & population distribution by age in India and the US, it was found that those ages 15-29 were the most vulnerable. It was also found that annual RTI deaths per 100,000 population in million plus cities 1991-2011 saw a 2-4 times increase. In addition, most RTI fatalities are pedestrians and MTWs in many of India’s cities.

India's national policy target for road safety is to reduce road fatalities by 50 percent in 2020. National workshops, state road safety councils, safety road funds, increases in driving schools and increased road safety educations are some of the measures being taken to achieve this goal. Despite these efforts, however, the number of fatalities in India has continued to increase since 2012 and national continues to underreport vulnerable road users.

"Implementation of Vision Zero in the South African Context"
Marianne Vanderschuren
Associate Professor, Centre for Transport Studies, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Cape Town

Overall, South Africa can be viewed as a combination of first and third world societies. Congestion is severe in the country and some 65 percent of households do not have access to a car. These households are reliant on NMT and public transport. However, there is a lack of proper infrastructure in these areas and crime makes the NMT and PT users vulnerable.

In terms of the statistics, South Africa's road safety rate is between 23.5 and 32.5 per 100,000 persons, depending on the source and the economic impact of traffic accidents is estimated to be between 334 billion to 487 billion rands. In many cases, accidents leave households without income earners, increasing poverty.

Vision Zero's target of reducing fatal crashes by 50 percent will most likely not be achievable in South Africa until 2050. The methodology to attain this target in South Africa rests on five pillars: RS management, RS and mobility, safer vehicles, safer roads, and post-crash responses.

"Regional Decisions and Vision Zero"
Hirokazu Akahane
IATSS Member
Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Chiba Institute of Technology

Japan's Tenth Five-Year Fundamental Plan for Traffic Safety aims toward a society without traffic accidents. To achieve this goal, the plan aims to reduce the number of deaths occurring within 24 hours to 2,500 or fewer people by 2020 and reduce the number of causalities to 500,000 or fewer by 2020. The priority targets of the plan are senior citizens and children.

One region has recently been ranked the worst for the number of fatalities per 100,000 population in Japan.A reason for this is that the distances between the two stop lines at some intersections are longer than in other regions and the increase in the number of accidents due to the distances between the stop lines is statistically significant. It is presumed that the geometric structure of intersections is affected by the values of the local community. One recommendation for this region to improve traffic safety is to promote citizen participation based on local people's understanding of the causal relationship with traffic accidents.

A strategic research project is underway for the 50th anniversary of IATSS to objectively and systematically understand the background behind regional differences in traffic safety target settings. The project will comparatively examine statistics and conduct interviews in countries, summarize the issues regarding the current road safety measures, and provide suggestions.