In 2023, about 1.19 million road users were killed according to the WHO, and the Academic Expert Group (AEG) estimates that approximately one-third of these deaths were work-related. This paper emphasizes that employers are bound to occupational health and safety (OHS) standards while using public roads and should ensure the same attention to traffic injury prevention as in other workplaces. Using analysis of current practices, this paper explores the interplay between road traffic rules and OHS regulations. Work-related driving requires compliance with both road rules and OHS obligations. Organizations often violate road rules, undermining OHS principles that demand that employers take every reasonable step to maximize safety through the use of effective and evidence-based safety measures. This means that work-related traffic should exceed the minimum safety requirements encoded in road rules, and maximize safety through the use of the best available methods. Research shows that several key road safety prevention strategies have demonstrated positive effects, allowing for effective implementation of OHS laws. This paper proposes a 5-point assessment of organizational safety compliance and rigorous safety management based on well-established key safety factors.

Vision Zero involves the use of a systems approach to eliminate fatal and serious injuries from motor vehicle crashes by accommodating basic human limitations that lead to crashes through fundamental behavioral expectations, together with sound vehicle and road design. Alcohol-related crashes account for a significant proportion of motor vehicle crash death and injury and can be addressed in a safe road transport system. We look at near-term policy and program interventions that are known to motivate drivers to make safe drinking and driving decisions, and possibilities for using technology over the longer term to address risks resulting from driver impairment that is either inadvertent or willful high-risk behavior. From the Vision Zero perspective,"normal driving" refers to a situation where traffic and road users are operating as desired and planned. A driver in this normal driving envelope operates at a safe speed, wears a seat belt, focuses on the driving task, and is not impaired. A safe system accommodates human errors, mistakes, and misjudgments in the normal driving envelope. However, it may not be capable of compensating for deliberate violations and rule-breaking. A critical role of behavioral programs and policies is to motivate safe decisions by drivers and other road users and keep them in the normal driving envelope where they can be protected from unintentional errors by a safe system. While much progress has been made in developing and implementing impaired driving policies and programs, much potential remains in the their ability to motivate drivers to meet the fundamental expectations required in a safe system. Examples of behavioral programs and policies that have strong evidence of effectiveness but are underutilized in the U.S. include conducting periodic sobriety checkpoints, lowering the blood alcohol concentration limit for driving, and mandating the use of ignition interlock devices. While the specific interventions may differ, it is likely that the same situation of incomplete implementation of behavioral programs and policies - and consequent unrealized value to a comprehensive safe system - applies to many other nations. To reach the goal of zero deaths, a comprehensive Vision Zero program needs to address the problem of deliberate risk-taking, which can include driver impairment from alcohol or other causes and extend to dangerous and reckless driving. Advanced safety technologies offer a range of opportunities for this purpose. Cars available today and in the future will have a plethora of sensors that monitor circumstances inside and around the car. These systems can identify whether a driver is in their safe driving envelope and respond with interventions that are appropriate for the severity and nature of the risk. Interventions could range from those that are not perceivable to the driver, such as putting driver assist systems into active mode, to stronger steps such as limiting or preventing vehicle operation. Zero fatalities or serious injuries in motor vehicle crashes is possible with a systems approach that accommodates human errors and mistakes that occur with the normal driving envelope and incorporates effective responses to deliberate risk-taking outside of this envelope.

The search for common and serious single causes of road crashes naturally leads to a concentration on the road user. This is supported by a legal framework in the search for the main cause and the suspect for this cause. In prevention, we have for decades been more inclined to look for systematic improvements of all elements of the road transport system, and we direct the recommendations for actions towards system designers, organizations, products and services. In this paper the discussion about causation and prevention is broadened in the light of Vision Zero and its approach to prevention of serious and fatal injuries. We also discuss the Swedish judicial system and why the prevention approach has not been legislated or even generally accepted. Occupational health and safety legislation and road rules are compared, as well as how sustainability practices and reporting are tools to apply prevention where organizations have a natural sphere of influence that could mitigate deaths and serious injuries within value chains. It is recommended that we stop using the term causation as it is only directing actions in one direction. There is a risk that the focus on causation, in particular single causes, will deviate actions away from robust prevention countermeasures such as increased seat belt use, relevant speed limits, and well functioning roundabouts and median barriers. Furthermore, there is also a risk that important preventative actions from organizations are overlooked.

AbstractThe ideas to develop and introduce partially or fully automated vehicles are not recent but are not used on any larger scale at this moment. It is though likely that automating different functions, or moving vehicles driverless, will be common sooner or later. In this text, it is discussed how Vision Zero principles relate to the automation of the road transport system. Key findings are that automated vehicles will have to be better than human drivers and their safety system horizon will be key to limiting their functionality. The road transport system will have to be adapted to both failing humans and failing automated vehicles.

AbstractRoad 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.

AbstractTraffic 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.

The concept of acceptable risk (AR) is used in many risk environments in the community. The application of AR can be made, in most cases, either as accepting what citizens or those exposed to risk seem to accept as current or future level, or as a predefined risk level. AR, as a predefined level exists in medicine, aviation, rail, workplace, etc., and seems to be used when humans are exposed to risks in a passive mode, or as potential victims. It is claimed that in road traffic, we traditionally see the user of road transport as an active part, accepting the current risk. Instead, we should in most cases see us as passive victims to the safety solutions we are exposed to. If we use a predefined level of AR, which is used in other environments, we would aim for a dramatically improved level, 100–1000 times lower risk than today's level. The implication of using a predefined risk level would have major consequences on the options for safety solutions, as well as on ethics of the current economic planning of road infrastructure investments and other aspects of professional responsibility for the risks we expose citizens to. It would also turn safety from being an economic factor in benefit-cost models to a being boundary condition of the road transport system.

Objective: The objectives of the present article were to (a) describe the main characteristics of bicycle crashes with regard to the road environment, crash opponent, cyclist, and crash dynamics; (b) compare individuals who describe their health after the crash as declined with those who describe their health as not affected; and (c) compare the number of injured cyclists who describe their health as declined after the crash with the predicted number of permanent medical impairments within the same population. Methods: A sample of individuals with specific injury diagnoses was drawn from the Swedish Traffic Accident Data Acquisition (STRADA) database (n = 2,678). A survey form was used to collect additional information about the crash and the health-related outcomes. The predicted number of impaired individuals was calculated by accumulating the risk for all individuals to sustain at least a 1% permanent medical impairment, based on the injured body region and injury severity. Results: Nine hundred forty-seven individuals (36%) responded, of whom 44% reported declined health after the crash. The majority (68%) were injured in single bicycle crashes, 17% in collisions with motor vehicles, and 11% in collisions with another cyclist or pedestrian. Most single bicycle crashes related to loss of control (46%), mainly due to skidding on winter surface conditions (14%), followed by loss of control during braking (6%). There was no significant difference in crash distribution comparing all crashes with crashes among people with declined health. The predicted number of impaired individuals (n = 427) corresponded well with the number of individuals self-reporting declined health (n = 421). Conclusions: The types of crashes leading to health loss do not substantially differ from those that do not result in health loss. Two thirds of injuries leading to health loss occur in single bicycle crashes. In addition to separating cyclists from motorized traffic, other preventive strategies are needed.

The aim of this study was to describe and compare road traffic injuries leading to long-term problems in Health related quality of life (HRQoL), with regards to road user group, injury severity and injured body region, which is important when considering injury preventive strategies. From the Swedish Traffic Accident Data Acquisition (STRADA), a randomized sample of people injured in a road traffic crash and seeking emergency hospital care in connection to the crash between 1st of January 2007 and 31st of December 2009 was drawn (n=4761). HRQoL was investigated using a self-report survey, namely the EQ-5D. Among the responding persons injured in a bicycle crash (n=402) or car crash (n=557) the injury outcome of reporting or not reporting any problem in HRQoL was compared between bicyclists and car occupants depending on injured body region and injury severity. The results showed that 59% of car occupants and 44% of bicyclists reported problems in HRQoL after a road traffic injury. Pain/discomfort and anxiety/depression were the health-related dimensions where people most frequently reported problems. Leg injuries were most often associated with reporting problems in HRQoL, for both bicyclists and car occupants. Another finding was that car occupants consistently reported more problems in HRQoL compared to bicyclists, even when controlled for injury severity and injured body region.

OBJECTIVE:The objective of this study was to estimate the safety benefits of in vehicle lane departure warning (LDW) and lane keeping aid (LKA) systems in reducing relevant real-world passenger car injury crashes.METHODS:The study used an induced exposure method, where LDW/LKA-sensitive and nonsensitive crashes were compared for Volvo passenger cars equipped with and without LDW/LKA systems. These crashes were matched by car make, model, model year, and technical equipment; that is, low-speed autonomous emergency braking (AEB) called City Safety (CS). The data were extracted from the Swedish Traffic Accident Data Acquisition database (STRADA) and consisted of 1,853 driver injury crashes that involved 146 LDW-equipped cars, 11 LKA-equipped cars, and 1,696 cars without LDW/LKA systems.RESULTS:The analysis showed a positive effect of the LDW/LKA systems in reducing lane departure crashes. The LDW/LKA systems were estimated to reduce head-on and single-vehicle injury crashes on Swedish roads with speed limits between 70 and 120 km/h and with dry or wet road surfaces (i.e., not covered by ice or snow) by 53% with a lower limit of 11% (95% confidence interval [CI]). This reduction corresponded to a reduction of 30% with a lower limit of 6% (95% CI) for all head-on and single-vehicle driver injury crashes (including all speed limits and all road surface conditions).CONCLUSIONS:LDW/LKA systems were estimated to lower the driver injury risk in crash types that the systems are designed to prevent; that is, head-on and single-vehicle crashes. Though these are important findings, they were based on a small data set. Therefore, further research is desirable to evaluate the effectiveness of LDW/LKA systems under real-world conditions and to differentiate the effectiveness between technical solutions (i.e., LDW and LKA) proposed by different manufacturers.

Established in 1997, the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) provides consumers with a safety performance assessment for the majority of the most popular cars in Europe. Thanks to its rigorous crash tests, Euro NCAP has rapidly become an important driver safety improvement to new cars. After ten years of rating vehicles, Euro NCAP felt that a change was necessary to stay in tune with rapidly emerging driver assistance and crash avoidance systems and to respond to shifting priorities in road safety. A new overall rating system was introduced that combines the most important aspects of vehicle safety under a single star rating. The overall rating system has allowed Euro NCAP to continue to push for better fitment and higher performance for vehicles sold on the European market. In the coming years, the safety rating is expected to play an important role in the support of the roll-out of highly automated vehicles.

This study reports on a collaborative research program initiated by Euro NCAP that explores the possibility for evaluating new safety technology using multiple databases. The Validating Vehicle Safety through Meta-Analysis (VVSMA) group comprising a collaboration of government, industry, consumer organisations, and researchers. Aggregate analyses of data pooled from a number of jurisdictions is combined to evaluate active safety technologies. An exemplar analysis of low speed AEB City technology is included using a standard rear-end crash analysis format and the established Multiple National Database Study (MUNDS) approach. Quasi induced exposure was employed to control for extraneous factors. The results showed that AEB City technology led to significant reductions in crashes overall, although individual jurisdiction analyses failed generally to show significant reductions in rear-end crashes. A second study to evaluate Lane Departure Warning (LDW) and/or Lane Keeping Assist (LKA) is currently underway and is expected to report on its findings early next year. With a substantial increase in available data, statistically significant real-world findings were obtained within much shorter timeframes. The meta-analysis approach using data from many jurisdictions is a unique contribution to the evaluation of vehicle safety technologies.

The Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation is responsible for road traffic safety in Sweden. But due to the decentralised structure in Sweden, the Ministry works with budget, goals, and policy related issues while the operations are managed by the Swedish Transport Administration based on the directions from the ministry. The administration is responsible for the planning of the entire transport system with all modes of transport. It is also responsible for the building and maintenance of roads and railroads. The Swedish Transport Administration, also has an overarching role in the development of long term strategies and plans for all modes of transport in the transport system, contributing to the goals set up by the government for the transport sector. The Transport Administration holds responsibility for research within the fields of mobility, environment and traffic safety. It is also performing in-depth studies of fatal crashes within the road traffic system. If co-operation with other actors in society is necessary to effectively achieve its goals the Administration may work together with these actors. The other authority in the sector is the Swedish Transport Agency which has overall responsibility for regulations within air, sea, rail road and road traffic. Within the Swedish Transport Agency the Road and Railway Department formulates regulations, examines and grants permits, as well as exercise supervision within the field of road transport over e.g. road traffic, vehicles, driving licences and commercial transport. The agency also conducts analyses of road traffic and supply information about injuries and accidents within the road transport system. Swedish Transport Agency is also maintains vehicle and driver licence registers. The Swedish Transport Administration and the Swedish Transport Agency are both responsible to work towards the transport policy goals. In Sweden the main other bodies active in road traffic safety efforts are the police and the local authorities. Other important parties are the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) for example the National Society for Road Safety (NTF), with its member organisations, and transport industry organisations. The Group for National Road Safety Co-operation (GNS) is a central body that co-ordinates the co-operation between the Swedish Transport Administration and Agency, the local authorities the authority for occupational health and safety and the police. The NTF is an additional member of this group, as well as some other key partners from the traffic safety sector.

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 (≤60 km/h) and rural (>60 km/h) speed zones. Areas requiring further research were identified and widespread fitment through the vehicle fleet is recommended.

Objectives: The objective of this article is to assess the status of road safety in Asia and present accident and injury prevention strategies based on global road safety improvement experiences and discuss the way forward by indicating opportunities and countermeasures that could be implemented to achieve a new level of safety in Asia.Methods: This study provides a review and analyses of data in the literature, including from the World Health Organization (WHO) and World Bank, and a review of lessons learned from best practices in high-income countries. In addition, an estimation of costs due to road transport injuries in Asia and review of future trends in road transport is provided.Results: Data on the global and Asian road safety problem and status of prevention strategies in Asia as well as recommendations for future actions are discussed. The total number of deaths due to road accidents in the 24 Asian countries, encompassing 56% of the total world population, is 750,000 per year (statistics 2010). The total number of injuries is more than 50 million, of which 12% are hospital admissions. The loss to the economy in the 24 Asian countries is estimated to around US$800 billion or 3.6% of the gross domestic product (GDP).Conclusions: This article clearly shows that road safety is causing large problems and high costs in Asia, with an enormous impact on the well-being of people, economy, and productivity. In many Asian low- and middle-income countries, the yearly number of fatalities and injuries is increasing. Vulnerable road users (pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists combined) are particularly at risk. Road safety in Asia should be given rightful attention, including taking powerful, effective actions. This review stresses the need for reliable accident data, because there is considerable underreporting in the official statistics. Reliable accident data are imperative to determine evidence-based intervention strategies and monitor the success of these interventions and analyses. On the other hand, lack of good high-quality accident data should not be an excuse to postpone interventions. There are many opportunities for evidence-based transport safety improvements, including measures concerning the 5 key risk factors: speed, drunk driving, not wearing motorcycle helmets, not wearing seat belts, and not using child restraints in cars, as specified in the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020. In this commentary, a number of additional measures are proposed that are not covered in the Decade of Action Plan. These new measures include separate roads or lanes for pedestrians and cyclists; helmet wearing for e-bike riders; special attention to elderly persons in public transportation; introduction of emerging collision avoidance technologies, in particular automatic emergency braking (AEB) and alcohol locks; improved truck safety focusing on the other road user (including blind spot detection technology; underride protection at the front, rear, and side; and energy-absorbing fronts); and improvements in motorcycle safety concerning protective clothing, requirements for advanced braking systems, improved visibility of motorcycles by using daytime running lights, and better guardrails.