What's it all about
What is a ‘safe system’ approach to road safety?
A Safe System or ‘Sustainable Safety’ approach to road safety aims to protect responsible road users and reduce the number of deaths and serious injuries by taking a look at the entire road safety system, including the roads, vehicles, road users and travel speeds.
The challenge is to create a culture of road use – and a road system – that is both precautionary and proactive in relation to road safety.
Safe system principles accept that people, even if they are highly motivated to behave safely while using the road, make errors that may result in crashes.
In addition to driver education, training, and punishment for unsafe behaviour, a safe system considers how the road system can be more forgiving of human error, and attempts to manage crash forces to survivable levels.
A Safe System approach includes:
- designing and maintaining roads to reduce risk as much as possible
- setting appropriate speed limits
- develop a culture of safe road use by educating and encouraging road users to comply with road rules, drive according to the conditions and be unimpaired and alert
- looking at the safety features of vehicles that reduce the likelihood and/or severity of a crash.