Definitions
This section provides an overview of the key terminology used in the Safe System approach, framework and Tool. It provides user with vocabulary to succesfully work with the Tool.
The six road safety pillars
Road Safety Management
Effective governance arrangements, strategies, and data collection and analysis systems to oversee and coordinate road safety efforts.
Safe roads
Safe roads are designed, built and maintained to ensure appropriate use of all roads in according to their function, to minimize the risk of severe crashes for all road users. This includes prioritizing the safety of vulnerable road users such as pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists, and ensuring that roads are designed to support safe road user behaviour.
Safe vehicles
Safe vehicles are equipped with active and passive safety systems, adhere to safety standards and regulations to ensure high protection for all road users.
Safe road user behaviour
Safe road user behaviour involves adherence to traffic laws and the adoption of practices that enhance safety and respect for all road users. This includes ensuring that the (design of the) roads, vehicles and regulations support safe road user behaviour.
Safe speed
Speed limits are set in accordance with the function and actual use of the road, they are credible and safe. Actual speeds are moderated by road design and policing, such that crash risks are minimized and human tolerance to crash forces is not exceeded.
Post-crash response
Emergency response and rehabilitation systems designed and resourced to minimize the impact of crashes.
The five key components of the Safe System
Establish robust institutional governance
Permanent institutions are required to organise government intervention covering research, funding, legislation, regulation and licencing and to maintain a focus on delivering improved road safety as a matter of national priority.
Share responsibility
Those who design, build, manage and use roads and vehicles and provide post-crash care have a shared responsibility to prevent crashes resulting in serious injury or death.
Strengthen all pillars
When all road-safety pillars are stronger, their effects are multiplied; if one part of the system fails, road users are still protected.
Prevent exposure to large forces
The human body has a limited physical ability to tolerate crash forces before harm occurs; the system should prevent those limits from being exceeded.
Support safe road user behaviour
While road-user errors can lead to serious harm, the Safe System focuses on roads and vehicles designed for safe interaction with road users. It supports humans not to make mistakes and tune their tasks as much as possible to their framework competencies.
Other important Safe System terms
The terminology used in the Safe System framework and the Tool emphasises co-operation between partners, and interventions aiming to improve safety. Each of these terms has a specific meaning within the context of the framework.
Co-operation
Co-operation in this context refers to an alignment of partners’ expectations, responsibilities and actions concerning the set-up, implementation, operation and supervision of interventions. Co-operation can also be defined as the shaping of formal and informal relationships to yield a higher level of performance.
Partners
Partners in the context of the Safe System framework can include public, private or civil-society organisations, buyers and sellers of transport equipment and services, private and public vehicle fleet owners or individuals. They may be policy makers, police forces, road designers, vehicle importers, emergency and health care workers, road authorities at the national, regional or local level, finance organisations or other bodies. They can intervene at the administrative or operational level, make interventions or enhance their implementation. In an effective Safe System environment, partners cooperate to make the Safe System work. When partners do not yet co-operate effectively because the Safe System approach is still emerging, they should be interpreted as "partners-to-be".
Interventions
Interventions refers to all actions, measures, responses and other initiatives needed to implement the Safe System and improve the safety in all pillars. Interventions may denote sets of direct countermeasures, aiming to reduce the likelihood of a fatal crash or the likelihood of a crash with severe injuries. These direct measures involve actions taken across different pillars to produce some improvement in safety outcomes such as a safe road improvement (e.g. a new roundabout, or the introduction of speed cameras).
Sometimes interventions may refer to programmes of cooperative actions with an organisational dimension, such as training of police officers or road designers, the setup of a road-crash data collection system, implementation of standards or the implementation of vehicle registration systems. Despite these different types of actions, with either direct or indirect effects on traffic safety, in the proposed Safe System implementation framework these are all covered by the term "intervention". All interventions should be based on evidence of what works in reducing fatal and serious crash outcomes to improve road safety.
Capacity Building
Capacity building means creating resources and tools necessary to target initiatives on a scale capable of reducing road deaths and injuries significantly as well as sustainably (Bliss and Breen, 2012). A key issue for capacity building is how to accelerate the process going from weak to strong institutional capacity to realize improved road safety over the long term. Implementing a Safe System requires capacity building at the global level as well as on regional, national and local levels.
This includes building core institutional capacity to bring targeted safety outcomes together as well as building management capacity and accelerate the transfer of knowledge grounded in practice by a "learning by doing" process. Capacity building includes education of professionals and stakeholders such as policy makers, police forces, road designers, vehicle importers, emergency and health care workers, road authorities at the national, regional or local levels, finance organisations or other bodies such as media.