Traffic Safety Research

Safe System is considered to be the state-of-the-art when it comes to road safety management at all levels. At its core lies the principle that severe and fatal injuries in traffic are largely preventable and thus they cannot be seen as an inevitable price to be paid for mobility. The goal of no one being killed or severely injured (so called Vision Zero), at first criticized as an unachievable dream, has now been accepted by many countries including the European Union, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and some states and cities in the US.

Having a strong moral component, Safe System comes also with a set of practical principles that allow to build a forgiving traffic system in which human mistakes or failures of vehicles or infrastructure are not punished by deaths. However, on the implementation level there are still many unresolved questions. Transition to Safe System is often met with resistance or misunderstanding by practitioners or politicians, incompatibility with the current practices and need for their update, lack of knowledge or good examples of how Safe System could be applied on specific road safety problems and risks.

The special issue investigates questions related to the Safe System transition, raising the awareness of the problems and the scientific level of the discussion on the topic.