Sunday, May 29, 2016

The Significance Of Vision Zero

By Daniel Young


Property worth billions is damaged and lives lost due to highway accidents that occur each year. As a result, a global initiative called vision zero was started to achieve road safety. The short form VZ will be used in this writing, although it is not a standard abbreviation. VZ has the key goal of achieving highway systems in which accidents resulting from road traffic are not fatal.

Various aspects of this initiative are governed by many principles. One of the aspects governed is construction of highways. Safety, ethics, mechanisms for change, and responsibility are the four major principles. Human safety is prioritized under the safety principle more than all other goals of road traffic systems.

The responsibility principle emphasizes shared responsibility between regulators and providers of road traffic systems. Under the safety principle, human fallibility must be taken into consideration and the opportunities for error must be minimized. Also, in cases errors occur, the amount of harm done must also be minimized. The mechanism for change emphasizes the need to change in order to achieve the goal of zero fatalities due to traffic accidents.

In order to achieve the objectives of the project, certain limits have been suggested on speed. Suggested speed limits are based on the limits of human being and vehicles. For example, if an accident occurs in which a car knocks a person, if the car is well designed, the person can effectively stand a hit at a speed of 30 km/h. Frontal impact between cars on the other hand can be withstood to speeds not more than 70 km/h in well-designed cars. For side impact, one will be safe in a well-designed vehicle at up to 50 km/h.

If there is need for more speed in areas with high levels of pedestrian traffic, it is suggested that pedestrian crossings should be separated from vehicular traffic. Otherwise, vehicles should only travel at speeds less than 30 km/h when moving through urban areas. In areas where the road is designed to prevent any form of frontal or side impacts, the initiative suggests that car can move at speeds above 100 km/h.

Many ways can be used to ensure that there is no frontal and side impacts. For starters, opposing traffic could be separated by constructing crash barriers on the roads. Another method involves keeping vulnerable and slow-moving road users from high-speed sections of the road system. Additional techniques are use of grade separation and limiting access.

There have big differences in the adoption of VZ in different countries. Some states have enforced the initiative on all road systems and areas while others have limited it to specific roads and regions. For example, Edmonton city was the first Canadian city to adopt VZ while other cities adopted it at different times later.

The level of impact experienced from this project is highest in developed states. There has been a significant fall in the number of fatalities. The same is not true in poor countries where adoption has been slow and non-uniform while fatalities rise yearly. Achieving zero fatalities globally is a goal that is still far from recognition, but it is achievable.




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