Vision zero: How it all started

This is a presentation of how I remember the first steps of Vision Zero, the Swedish reorientation of traffic safety policy that took place from the mid-1990s and onwards. It is not an objective text that would be impossible to write as one of the initiators of the policy change. But it brings up some of the steps of the process and presents some hypotheses on how policy change might happen. It is claimed that there was no planned process, not even an ideology or well-developed idea, behind VZ from the very beginning. But there were opportunities and events where one thing led to another. The most fundamental being the immediate acceptance from the Swedish Minister of Infrastructure back in January 1995. The most prominent ideas behind VZ are that firstly safety is a matter of how the providers of the road transport system design and build and manage the system. The second idea is that a professional provider cannot trade off the citizens\u27 life and health for benefits to the society and its citizens. The underlying hypothesis is that tradition and road traffic rules for the road users have been used as an excuse for not undertaking necessary system changes and modifications. The users have always been blamed for crashes and its consequences by the legal system as well as general approach from the society. The last part of the paper reflects on what is necessary to do in the future to eradicate amateurism, populism, and trade-offs from the road traffic safety field. Maybe a "duty of care" legislation needs to be introduced, protecting the citizen from poor design and operations

ISO 39001 road traffic safety management system, performance recording, and reporting

Traffic safety has shifted from being a solely individual issue to also include responsibilities from those organizations that influences the use and quality of the road transport system. This chapter explores the background of this and presents how ISO 39001 has been introduced as a tool to manage traffic safety in organisations. Further it is setting organizational road traffic safety into context of the 3rd Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety, the Stockholm declaration and the decision of the United Nations general Assembly. The chapter also discusses how a value chain analysis can help organisations in understanding and tackling their road safety footprint and part of their sustainability reporting

Vision zero in disease eradication

Road safety has come a long way in our lifetimes, and there are steps in this progress that mark their place in history. Many of these were technical innovations, such as seat belts, electronic stability control, and geofencing for vehicle speed control. Also important, though perhaps fewer in number, were innovations in strategies to achieve change. These include the public health model of Dr. William Haddon, the introduction of Vision Zero, the World Report on Road Traffic Injury Prevention from WHO and the World Bank, and more recently, the Decade of Action 2011-2020. I am sure that the work and recommendations presented in this report will deserve their place in a "Hall of Fame" for strategic innovation in saving lives across the globe

Effects on crash risk of automatic emergency braking systems for pedestrians and bicyclists

OBJECTIVE: The first automatic emergency braking (AEB) system was presented in 2003 and aimed to mitigate or reduce rear-end crashes. Since then, several AEB systems aimed to reduce other collision types have been introduced and studies have shown that they reduce crash risks. The aim with this study was to evaluate crash reductions of cars fitted with AEB systems with pedestrian detection and those with bicyclist detection. METHODS: The study is based on the Swedish Traffic Accident Data Acquisition that includes road traffic accidents reported by the police and by emergency hospitals. Crashes occurring between 2015 and 2020 and with cars from model years 2015 to 2020 were included. The statistical analysis used odds ratio calculations with an induced exposure approach where the outcomes of sensitive and nonsensitive crashes were studied. The sensitive crashes were hit pedestrians and bicyclists, respectively. The nonsensitive crash type in both comparisons was struck vehicles in rear-end crashes. Evaluations were also made for different light and weather conditions and for high and low speed roads. RESULTS: Seven hundred and twelve hit pedestrians and 1,105 hit bicyclists were included, and the nonsensitive crashes consisted of 1,978 vehicles. The overall reduction on crash risk for AEB with pedestrian detection was 8% (\ub115%; ns) and for AEB with bicyclist detection it was 21% (\ub117%). When separating for light conditions, no reduction in crash risk for AEB with pedestrian detection nor for AEB with bicyclist detection could be seen in darkness. However, in daylight and twilight conditions, AEB with pedestrian detection reduced pedestrian crash risk by 18% (\ub119%; ns) and AEB with bicyclist detection reduced bicyclist crash risk by 23% (\ub119%). No significant reductions could be seen when separating for weather conditions except for a 53% (\ub131%) reduction for bicyclists in rain, fog, and snowfall. A larger reduction on high-speed roads (50-120 km/h) compared with low-speed roads (10-40 km/h) was also found. CONCLUSIONS: AEB systems with bicyclist detection were found to reduce the numbers of hit bicyclists, especially in daylight and twilight conditions. In darkness, no reduction for hit pedestrians or bicyclists was found

Проблема невідповідності виробництва та споживанні енергії в світі

The objective of this study was to study whiplash injury outcome in front-seat occupants in rear-end impacts using double paired comparison technique. The combination of gender, seated position, and outcome was analyzed. Folksam, a Swedish insurance company, has a database of whiplash injuries. A questionnaire was used to collect study data. The response rate was 81%. The inclusion criteria included medical impairment one year after the impact, as judged by medical specialists. The study included rear-end impacts between 1990 and 1999 that resulted in at least one permanent neck injury impairment; in total, 430 impacts with 860 occupants and 444 impairments. Of those suffering impairment, 302 were female and 142 male; 235 were seated in the driver's seat and 209 in the front passenger seat. Relative risk estimates for impairing whiplash injury, by gender and seated position: 1.Driver male (DM)/passenger female (PF) relative risk = 0.5 n = 218 2.Driver male (DM)/passenger male (PM) relative risk = 1.4 n = 57 3.Driver female (DF)/passenger female (PF) relative risk = 2.5 n = 102 4.Driver female (DF)/passenger male (PM) relative risk = 4.6 n = 67. Females had a relative risk of medical impairment of 3.1 compared to men after adjustment for the average increased risk in the driver position. The driver position had a doubled relative risk compared to the front passenger position. As a conclusion it may be of value to take risk differences between male and female occupants and between driver and front passenger positions into account in future automotive car and seat construction.Originally mentioned in thesis as submitted to journal: Traffic injury prevention, ISSN 1538-9588.</p

Fatalities in value chains—an attempt to classify road traffic crashes in accordance with the United Nations General Assembly resolution 74/299

Large corporations are today expected or obliged to report on accidental deaths and serious injuries to employed or contracted employed as a part of reporting on sustainability and workplace safety. Data about road crashes are part of such events and are therefore, but not separately, collected and presented. In Europe, 40% to 60% of all work-related accidents resulting in death has been reported to be road traffic accidents. In 2020, the Stockholm Declaration urged all corporations to report on their safety footprint including their entire value chain. The aims of the present study were to use a new definition of safety footprint and to quantify those killed as employed and at work, and those killed in a crash where the other part was at work, as so called third parties, to transports for duty with employed drivers. The Swedish Transport Administration (STA) in-depth database of fatal crashes was used, that covers all fatalities classified as road traffic related and consists of information from the police, medical journals, autopsy reports, accident analyses performed by STA, and witness statements. All fatalities excluding suicides or those caused by sickness occurring during year 2019 were investigated (n = 214). 11% (23/214) of the fatalities occurred when the killed person was at work and 16 while commuting. 37% of the fatal accidents occurred when the killed road user or the other part was at work. In total, almost half of the fatalities in the road transport system were related to work in some way when including both the fatally injured and their collision partners. A larger proportion of non-privately owned and procured vehicles was found for the vehicles of the collision partners compared to the vehicles of the fatally injured. In approximately one third of the fatal accidents a procurement of a transport service was involved. The Swedish Work Environment Authority (SWEA) identified 10 of the 23 fatalities at work investigated and none of these accidents was found to be investigated by the police as a crime related to the work environment. In conclusion, almost half of the fatalities in the road transport system in 2019 were related to work in some way, either the fatally injured or their collision partners were at work or while commuting. When including the third-party casualties, the problem becomes much bigger and more complex. In Sweden fatalities related to work are under reported, as the SWEA does not receive basic data. Efforts are needed to improve reporting of work-related road fatalities. It was found that the police did not investigate road traffic fatalities as death at workplace. It is crucial that the police start to follow the intention of regulations linked to workplace safety. If not, the possibility to collect relevant data for organizations to report on their safety footprint is limited. It is complicated to collect, classify and analyse value chain fatal crash information, mainly due to that the police do not investigate fatal road crashes as possibly work-related events. It is recommended that organizations manage their own data collection if they wish to report on their safety footprint data

Automated vehicles: How do they relate to vision zero

The Swedish Transport Administration (STA) work to reduce the number of suicides in the transport system. Fatalities, i.e., on roads, railways, and bridges, originate from either accidents or suicides, natural death excluded. Knowing the correct manner of death is needed to work with optimal prevention strategies. The aims are to separate fatalities due to suicides, follow the development, and implement measures for suicide prevention. Methods are developed for suicide classification and criteria for the selection in which suicides were suspected. Fatalities in level one and two of five were classified as suicides. Data from the STA\u27s databases are used and so are data from the psychosocial investigations done by a trained investigator in the topic and with clinical experience from counselling at hospitals. 2129 persons died on the roads in Sweden, 10% (206 persons) were classified as suicides. 336 persons died after being hit by trains, 85% (284 persons) were suicides. 130 persons died by jumping from bridges. The number of suicides increases with population density. Suicide in the transport system is a major problem; firstly personal tragedies, it is also a work environment problem for truck and train drivers and for the emergency staff. It generates delays and costs for passenger and cargo transport. By analyzing the results of countermeasures in the form of obstructive barriers, the physical environment can be improved and high-risk areas can be accentuated. Restricting access to the means of suicide is important in suicide prevention. Strategies for the STA include suicide prevention in the design of new roads, railways, and bridges, as well as by identifying and reducing existing high-risk locations. Sharing the results with other authorities and organizations and cooperation within suicide prevention missions are vital for the enhancement of the overall suicide prevention work in society

Evaluation of the benefits of vehicle safety technology: the MUNDS study

Real-world retrospective evaluation of the safety benefits of new integrated safety technologies is hampered by the lack of sufficient data to assess early reliable benefits. This MUNDS study set out to examine if a “prospective” case-control meta-analysis had the potential to provide more rapid and rigorous analyses of vehicle and infrastructure safety improvements. To examine the validity of the approach, an analysis of the effectiveness of ESC using a consistent analytic strategy across 6 European and Australasian databases was undertaken. It was hypothesised that the approach would be valid if the results of the MUNDS analysis were consistent with those published earlier (this would confirm the suitability of the MUNDS approach). The findings confirm the hypothesis and also found stronger and more robust findings across the range of crash-types, road conditions, vehicle sizes and speed zones than previous. The study recommends that while a number of limitations were identified with the findings that need be addressed in future research, the MUNDS approach nevertheless should be adopted widely for the benefit of all vehicle occupants

MUNDS: a new approach to evaluating safety technologies

Real-world evaluations of the safety benefits of new integrated safety technologies are hampered by the lack of sufficient data to assess early reliable benefits. To address this, a new approach was developed using a case-control, meta-analysis of coordinated national police data from Australia, Finland, Italy, New Zealand, Sweden and the UK, in assessing the benefits of Electronic Stability Control (ESC). The results showed that singlevehicle injury crash reductions varied between 21% and 54%, dependent on the speed zone of the crash and the road condition (significantly more effective in wet/icy road conditions than dry roads). For injury crashes involving more than one vehicle, ESC was twice as effective preventing crashes in high speed than lower speed zones. The findings using this new approach were consistent with those published by various equivalent individual studies, bearing in mind their wider international scope in terms of driving conditions and vehicle fleets studied. It was concluded that this new approach using a “prospective” meta-analysis method has the potential to expedite the process of evaluating emerging vehicle safety technologies that would otherwise be subject to much greater delays before sufficient evidence could be collected

Effectiveness of low speed autonomous emergency braking in real-world rear-end crashes

This study set out to evaluate the effectiveness of low speed autonomous emergency braking (AEB) technology in current model passenger vehicles, based on real-world crash experience. The Validating Vehicle Safety through Meta-Analysis (VVSMA) group comprising a collaboration of government, industry consumer organisations and researchers, pooled data from a number of countries using a standard analysis format and the established MUND approach. Induced exposure methods were adopted to control for any extraneous effects. The findings showed a 38 percent overall reduction in rear-end crashes for vehicles fitted with AEB compared to a comparison sample of similar vehicles. There was no statistical evidence of any difference in effect between urban (≤60km/h) and rural (>60km/h) speed zones. Areas requiring further research were identified and widespread fitment through the vehicle fleet is recommended