Our work: Safe systems

Safe Systems
In February 2020, the 3rd Ministerial Conference on Road Safety was held in Stockholm, Sweden. On that occasion, our organization was invited as a member of the United Nations Road Safety Collaboration (UNRSC) and shared a document developed by a group of international experts from various specialties, "Saving lives beyond 2020", where the main recommendations for the work on Road Safety for the Second Decade of Action and for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development were collected.

During the Conference, the Minister of Infrastructure of Sweden, host of the event, presented the Stockholm Declaration, which calls on States to work on the improvement of different elements that make up Road Safety, taking Safe Systems as the axis.

Then, on August 31, 2020, the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution A/RES/74/299 for the improvement of Road Safety in the world proclaiming the period 2021 - 2030 as the Second Decade of Action for Road Safety, which aims to reduce road traffic deaths and injuries by at least 50%. at least 50%. Thus, it calls on Member States to continue to act until 2030 on all road safety related targets related to road safety of the Sustainable Development Goals.

For this, it promotes the adoption of the Safe System approach, stressing the need for joint work between the public, private, and civil society sectors.

The Safe System Approach
The Safe System Approach to road safety is a holistic vision that provides a framework for assessing, guiding, and improving road safety. At the heart of this approach is the need for responsibility for reducing risk to be shared by road users and by those who design, maintain and operate all parts of the transportation system.

This approach does not ignore risk behavior, but recognizes human fallibility and the need to take greater account of human error. Planning and developing a safe system means looking beyond the rules and systematically planning and designing a sustainable and intrinsically safe transportation system for all users.

Safe system guiding principles

Creating a safe system depends to a large extent on understanding and applying these guiding principles:

  • The limits of human performance: we all make mistakes and must recognize the limits of our capabilities.

  • The physical limits of human tolerance to violent forces: we are physically vulnerable when involved in a traffic incident.

  • Shared responsibility: this means that we must all take an individual and shared role in road safety.

  • A forgiving road system: so that when crashes and errors occur, fatalities are avoided and injuries are minimized.

  • Share: