Tuesday 26 April 2016

The Principles And Purpose Of Vision Zero

By Linda Wright


Accidents happen on a daily basis on road systems globally and they cause hundreds of fatal injuries and deaths. That is why action through projects is being taken to alleviate or minimize these incidences. Vision zero is a road traffic safety project carried out in several countries with the intention of attaining highway systems that have no serious injuries or deaths in road traffic. The reasoning behind this project is that human life is too valuable for a price tag to be placed on it.

There are four main principles that govern the whole project, that is, ethics, responsibility, safety, and mechanisms. The principle of ethics holds that human life should hold higher status over other objectives such as mobility which also need to be achieved on roads. The second principle is responsibility, which holds that road users and parties involved in the provision and regulation of road traffic systems share responsibility.

The third principle is concerned with the safety of road users. It states that systems of road traffic must account for human fallibility and minimize chances of errors occurring. Even if the errors occur, the roads should be designed as to minimize the harm inflicted on victims of accidents. The last principle deals with mechanisms for change. Under this principle, the safety of citizens must be guaranteed by regulators and providers. Citizens, road users, and providers and regulators must cooperate and be willing to change to attain safety.

More principles were incorporated into the project several months after its commencement. The intention of the extra principles was to make sure that motorists have a complete understanding of the full scope the movement had. The first principle added holds that no injury or death caused by traffic is acceptable since they are all preventable. Secondly, people will always be prone to making mistakes. Thus, fatalities need to be prevented even in the face of such mistakes.

Thirdly, decisions made in transportation systems must place human safety at the forefront. Cost and other factors should come second in all decisions. Finally, a holistic approach to the formulation of traffic safety solutions must be adopted.

The movement suggested certain long-term changes to speed limits in different parts of the road that would ensure that its objectives are achieved. Human and automobile limits are based on in determining the suggested speed limits. For instance, 30 km/h is the maximum human tolerance to a pedestrian hit by a car that is well-designed.

Thus, maximum speeds cars should move at is 30 km/h when they are moving in populated areas. Separate roads should be made to keep pedestrians separate if cars must move at greater speeds in areas with high pedestrian population. Similarly, the highest level of frontal impact that well-designed cars can tolerate is at 70 km/h. Maximum side impact is slightly lower at 50 km/h.

If a road system is designed so that no side and frontal impact is expected, speeds of over 100 km/h can be tolerated. Road systems of these types are designed with crash barriers to separate opposing traffic. They also have grade separation, limited access, and prohibitions on vulnerable or slower road users.




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