Highway accidents claim a lot of lives and destroy billions of dollars of property each year that they have become a major concern worldwide. Vision zero refers to a project that was initiated globally to assist in achieving road safety. The abbreviation VZ will be used in this article. The major goal of this highway project is the achievement of highway systems that lack serious injuries or fatalities due to road traffic.
The project operates under several principles that govern the construction and other aspects of the highway system. The four main principles are ethics, responsibility, safety, and mechanisms. Under the principle of ethics, human life is given priority over all other objectives of road traffic systems such as mobility.
The responsibility principle emphasizes shared responsibility between regulators and providers of road traffic systems. Under the safety principle, human fallibility must be taken into consideration and the opportunities for error must be minimized. Also, in cases errors occur, the amount of harm done must also be minimized. The mechanism for change emphasizes the need to change in order to achieve the goal of zero fatalities due to traffic accidents.
As part of the strategy to attain the goals stipulated by the project, limiting of speeds has been suggested in certain areas. Human and vehicular limits are based on to reach the suggested speed limits. For instance, if a person is knocked by a car, they can perfectly withstand the impact if the car is well designed and is moving a speed of less than 30 km/h. Safety of the individual will also still be ensured in frontal and side impacts at speeds less than 70 km/h and 50 km/h, only if the design of the vehicles is good.
In cases where vehicles need to move fast in urban areas, the suggested solution is separation of vehicular and pedestrian traffic. Otherwise, all movement by vehicles in urban areas should be constrained to speeds less than 30 km/h. The initiative suggests that drivers can move at speeds in excess of 100 km/h if roads are designed to prevent any form of frontal or side impacts.
There are several ways of ensuring that roads lack any possibility of side or frontal impacts. The first method is by constructing crash barriers to separate traffic in different directions from each other. Another way is by prohibiting slower of more vulnerable road users from using sections of roads where only high-speed vehicles are allowed to move. Additional methods are to ensure limited access and to use grade separation.
VZ has been adopted differently by countries. The adoption has been done to all road systems in some countries while some countries have limited the adoption to certain areas and roads. For example, in Canada, Edmonton City adopted the initiative in 2015 way before other cities followed suit.
The impact of the project has been seen to be highest in developed countries where it has reduced the number of traffic fatalities significantly. In poor countries however, the adoption has been slow and non-uniform and traffic fatalities seem to continue rising. So far, the project is very promising and there is hope for achieving zero fatalities on highway road systems around the world.
The project operates under several principles that govern the construction and other aspects of the highway system. The four main principles are ethics, responsibility, safety, and mechanisms. Under the principle of ethics, human life is given priority over all other objectives of road traffic systems such as mobility.
The responsibility principle emphasizes shared responsibility between regulators and providers of road traffic systems. Under the safety principle, human fallibility must be taken into consideration and the opportunities for error must be minimized. Also, in cases errors occur, the amount of harm done must also be minimized. The mechanism for change emphasizes the need to change in order to achieve the goal of zero fatalities due to traffic accidents.
As part of the strategy to attain the goals stipulated by the project, limiting of speeds has been suggested in certain areas. Human and vehicular limits are based on to reach the suggested speed limits. For instance, if a person is knocked by a car, they can perfectly withstand the impact if the car is well designed and is moving a speed of less than 30 km/h. Safety of the individual will also still be ensured in frontal and side impacts at speeds less than 70 km/h and 50 km/h, only if the design of the vehicles is good.
In cases where vehicles need to move fast in urban areas, the suggested solution is separation of vehicular and pedestrian traffic. Otherwise, all movement by vehicles in urban areas should be constrained to speeds less than 30 km/h. The initiative suggests that drivers can move at speeds in excess of 100 km/h if roads are designed to prevent any form of frontal or side impacts.
There are several ways of ensuring that roads lack any possibility of side or frontal impacts. The first method is by constructing crash barriers to separate traffic in different directions from each other. Another way is by prohibiting slower of more vulnerable road users from using sections of roads where only high-speed vehicles are allowed to move. Additional methods are to ensure limited access and to use grade separation.
VZ has been adopted differently by countries. The adoption has been done to all road systems in some countries while some countries have limited the adoption to certain areas and roads. For example, in Canada, Edmonton City adopted the initiative in 2015 way before other cities followed suit.
The impact of the project has been seen to be highest in developed countries where it has reduced the number of traffic fatalities significantly. In poor countries however, the adoption has been slow and non-uniform and traffic fatalities seem to continue rising. So far, the project is very promising and there is hope for achieving zero fatalities on highway road systems around the world.
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