
Countries that adopted the approach in the 1990s show large drops in deaths between 19 - with a 47 percent reduction in Australia, 48 percent reduction in New Zealand, 80 percent reduction in Spain, and 67 percent reduction in Sweden. Overall, the Safe System approach has been linked to substantial traffic fatality reductions.
#WORMS REVOLUTION CRASH FIX DRIVERS#
Flashing beacons that alert drivers to pedestrian crosswalks.Lane reductions, on some multi-lane roads where pedestrians and bicyclists are present, that help slow vehicles and give drivers more time to react.Specific design changes in a Safe System include: "Even with a forgiving design, crashes will occur in a Safe System, so roads are designed to limit crash forces to survivable levels." "ormal human lapses in judgment or diligence are expected, and roads are configured so that such errors do not lead to death or serious injury," the co-authors write. By contrast, the Safe System approach is designed to place a greater burden on the design of roads and vehicles. The traditional strategy for road safety in the U.S., the authors note, puts much of the burden of responsibility on the people driving, walking, or cycling on the roads. Robertson Faculty Development Chair in Injury Prevention at the Bloomberg School. "We see the Safe System approach as a way of engineering safety into the road system - making safety natural and intuitive for those who use the roads, so that the way they'll feel most comfortable driving or walking is the safest way," says co-author Jeffrey Michael, EdD, a former senior official at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration who is now a Distinguished Scholar in the Department of Health Policy and Management and the Leon S. "With this report, we're encouraging policymakers to adopt what would be a paradigm shift in the approach to road safety in the U.S., with the potential to dramatically reduce the vehicle-related injuries and deaths that we've been seeing on a daily basis," says co-author Shannon Frattaroli, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Bloomberg School and director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy. The Safe System Consortium, a group of more than two dozen leading highway engineers, scientists, and public health professionals, convened earlier this year to reimagine road safety and equity in this country, as a new presidential administration got underway. The report, "Recommendations of the Safe System Consortium," was released on May 11.

declined sharply between the 1960s and 1990, largely as a result of the car safety revolution. Since 2009, the traffic death rate has remained relatively steady at about 11 deaths per 100,000 population, and crashes have persisted as the leading cause of death among young people. The report's authors advocate that the Safe System approach can improve road safety equity if it is implemented in ways that close the safety gap between well-served and historically underserved communities.Īccording to the National Safety Council, highway deaths increased 8% last year over the previous year even though people were driving considerably less, with an estimated 42,000 deaths in motor vehicle crashes and 4.8 million injuries. In Sweden, where the approach was first implemented, road deaths fell by about 67 percent from 1990 to 2017. This approach - which may include the use of roundabouts, separated bike lanes, rumble strips, and other measures - has already been applied successfully in several other countries. A Safe System minimizes the chances for mistakes by drivers, pedestrians, and bicyclists, and reduces the intensity of crashes when they do occur. The Safe System approach engineers road systems so that they are safe when used intuitively, the way people tend to use them.
