Friday 22 April 2016

The Principles And Purpose Of Vision Zero

Posted by Unknown at 13:17
By Linda Wright


Accidents that happen everyday on a global scale result in many deaths and fatal injuries. Accidents have become so rampant that measures are being taken to reduce or alleviate them altogether. Vision zero refers to a multi-national road traffic safety project that is being undertaken with the aim of achieving a highway system that has no serious injuries or fatalities in road traffic. The reason behind the project is that no price should be placed on human life.

The government of the entire project is based on four principles. These principles are safety, mechanisms of change, responsibility, and ethics. The principle of ethics demand that other goals and priorities in road systems should come after human safety. The principle of responsibility maintains that there is shared responsibility for ensuring safety between users of roads and providers and regulators of transportation systems.

The third principle deals with road user safety. Under this principle, human fallibility must be accounted for in road traffic systems and chances for errors minimized. Even in the event that errors occur, harm inflicted should be kept to the minimal. The concern of the fourth principle is mechanisms of change. This principle considers guaranteeing the safety of citizens by providers and regulators. There must be cooperation among road users, citizens, and providers and regulators and the three parties must have the will to change so as to achieve road safety.

The project has more principles being added to it after it had started being implemented in various countries. By incorporating the additional principles it was intended to have the full scope of the movement communicated to motorists. The first principles deals with unacceptability of fatalities resulting from road traffic accident because they can be prevented, The second principle states that human will always make mistakes and it is only reasonable to minimize the fatalities when mistakes are made.

Thirdly, all decision making processes in transportation system should put safety at the forefront. No other factor, even the cost should be considered as more important than safety. Lastly, a holistic approach must be adopted when formulating traffic safety solutions.

To ensure that its goals are met, the movement made long-term suggestions on speed limits on various road systems. The determination of speed limits was based on both human and vehicle limits. For example, a human being can safely tolerate a pedestrian hit by a car moving at 30 km/h.

Thus, in populated regions, cars must not exceed 30 km/h of speed. In case higher speeds are needed, then pedestrians should be kept away from motorized traffic by constructing a separate road fro them. Cars with good designs can withstand frontal impact effectively while travelling at 70 km/h. Maximum speed for side impact is considerably lower at 50 km/h.

Roads whose designs allow no frontal or side impacts to be anticipated can tolerate speeds of more than 100 km/h. The designs of roads like this incorporate crash barriers to separate traffic in opposite directions. Additionally, they have grade separation, prohibitions on vulnerable and slower users, and limited access.




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