The integral role of behavioral safety and road user responsibility within a Safe System approach to traffic safety has been highlighted in a new report published by the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA).
The report, Putting the Pieces Together: Addressing the Role of Behavioral Safety in the Safe System Approach, debunks the misconception that infrastructure alone can end road deaths and that behavioral safety plays no role in keeping road users safe. The report stresses that it will take a comprehensive solution – including infrastructure improvements, changes to road design, equitable enforcement of traffic laws, education and public outreach, and emergency response – to reduce traffic crashes, injuries, and deaths. The Safe System approach has been highly effective in other countries, with traffic fatalities falling in Sweden, where the approach originated, by 67 percent between 1990 and 2017.
“The United States is heading in the wrong direction when it comes to traffic safety. Everything that should be decreasing is increasing, and vice versa. A public safety crisis of this magnitude requires a concerted, coordinated effort that uses every safety tool at our disposal,” said GHSA Executive Director Jonathan Adkins. “The Safe System approach holds great promise in addressing the difficult task of ending roadway deaths, but only if we use all of its strategies. The traffic safety community needs to work together, not in silos, if we want to make progress on the road to zero traffic deaths.”
The Safe System approach envisions eliminating fatal and serious crashes for all road users by creating a transportation system that accommodates human mistakes and keeps crash impacts on the human body at survivable levels. It is based on five key elements that, combined, are designed to provide a systematic approach to traffic safety: safe road users, safe vehicles, safe speeds, safe roads, and post-crash care.
The redundancy offered by these multiple layers of protection – known as the “Swiss cheese model” – is the central tenet of the Safe System approach. If one layer fails, the aim is that the others will provide a protective effect and lessen the likelihood of a serious or fatal injury in the event of a crash.
