Special issue on Safe System transition

Special issue: call for papers

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 members of 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 for specific road safety problems and risks.

The Traffic Safety Research journal calls for research papers that investigate these issues. The purpose of the special issue is to raise the awareness of the problems and the scientific level of the discussion related to the Safe System transition.

The non-exhausting list of topics includes:

• Analysis of road safety policies from the Safe System perspective, including the processes of their creation, implementation and evaluation
• Road safety data and KPIs relevant for the Safe System
• Examples and evaluations of practical application of the Safe System principles to address specific road safety problems
• Innovative measures in line with the Safe System principles (e.g. Road Safety Footprint, safety improvements through procurements, etc.)
• Application of the Safe System in the context of low- and middle-income countries
• Theoretical and conceptual works related to further development of the Safe System.

Interdisciplinary contributions is encouraged.

Submission deadline: 15 January 2024

Publication of the accepted papers is done on the rolling bases, i.e. they become accessible as soon as the copyediting process is completed.

Submission Instructions

Before the submission, make sure to have read the Guide for authors provided by the TSR journal. All the standard requirements apply. During the submission, select Special Issue 2022–23 'Safe System transition' to make sure your paper follows the right editorial track.

All submitted papers will go through the Open peer review procedure implemented by the TSR.