Vision Zero and the Safe System Approach

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The goal of Vision Zero, first implemented by Sweden in 1997, is to eliminate deaths and serious injuries from road transportation. Achieving this goal will require the adoption of a Safe System Approach that considers the mental and physical capacities of humans and creates road transportation systems designed to effectively reduce the risk of injury and death caused by crashes.

Vision Zero Principles:

  1. Life and health can never be exchanged for other benefits in society,
  2. Serious injuries and fatalities are predictable and preventable,
  3. Road users are vulnerable but should not be killed or seriously injured as a result of a crash,
  4. Humans are prone to error but should not die or become seriously injured as a result,
  5. System-wide changes are the most effective.

More information on Vision Zero can be found in The Vision Zero Handbook: Theory, Technology and Management for a Zero Casualty Policy and Vision Zero and the Safe System Approach: A Primer for Canada (2023).

Safe System Approach:

The Safe System Approach recognizes the interdependence of the safe system components: Safe Roads, Safe Speeds, Safe Road Users and Safe Vehicles, and the actions that can be taken to achieve continuous improvements across these components. The goal of this approach is to prevent all collisions and to assure that if collisions do occur, road users will not be seriously injured. While road users must always try to interact safely, the Safe System Approach emphasizes that the transportation system must be designed to accommodate human vulnerability and error. Therefore, the Safe System approach places more responsibility on the system designers than on individual road users. The Safe System Approach is illustrated in the figure below (Canada’s Road Safety Strategy 2025).

Components of Safe System Approach

Safe System Approach
Graphic Credit: Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators adapted from the 2009 WHO report on the Global Status on Road Safety

Additional information on Vision Zero and the Safe System Approach:

Parachute’s Vision Zero Road Safety Initiative

Vision Zero: Definition & Principles

What is a Safe System Approach in Road Safety

ITE Research: The Road to Zero: Taking a Safe System Approach

Safe System Approach & Vision Zero: TAC’s Primer for Canada

Action2Zero – Transportation Injury Research Foundation

Decades of Action for Road Safety:

The United Nations (UN) General Assembly passed a resolution in March 2010 to establish the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020. During this decade, the goal of the World Health Organization was to “stabilize and then reduce the forecasted level of road traffic fatalities around the world by increasing road safety activities conducted at national, regional and global levels” by 2020 (Global Plan for the Decade of Action on Road Safety — WHO).

The principles guiding the Decade of Action are to:

  • Adopt a “Safe System Approach” to deal with traffic collisions,
  • Ensure ownership for activities at the national and local level,
  • Include governments, the private sector, and nongovernmental organizations in the development of improvements to road safety.

According to the World Health Organization “Among UN Member States, 108 countries reported a drop in road traffic-related deaths between 2010 and 2021. Ten countries succeeded in reducing road traffic deaths by over 50%: Belarus, Brunei Darussalam, Denmark, Japan, Lithuania, Norway, Russian Federation, Trinidad and Tobago, United Arab Emirates and Venezuela. Thirty-five more countries made notable progress, reducing deaths by 30% to 50%”. Global Status Report on Road Safety 2023 — WHO

With road safety now included in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, (SDG) much more must be done to stop the carnage on the world’s roads that kills 1.35 million people every year. That’s 2 deaths every minute globally.

A goal of a 50% reduction in both fatalities and serious injuries was adopted by the United Nations at a meeting in Sweden in 2020. This new target and the Decade of Action 2021-2030 are intended to save 675,000 lives a year, accelerate progress in global road injury prevention, and work towards a world eventually free from road fatalities and serious injuries. More information can be found at: The Stockholm Declaration on Road Safety