Road Safety Manual
A manual for practitioners and decision makers
on implementing safe system infrastructure!
The Safe System approach is a comprehensive safety philosophy, developed and internationally agreed-upon to form the foundation for safe design and operation of the road transport system. The deficiencies in traditional approaches to achieving a safe road network were highlighted by Tingvall (2005). He noted that the road transport system internationally has traditionally been characterised as follows:
These comments draw attention to the fact that there has been a lack of acceptance of responsibility in this field by most governments. The safest communities (OECD, 2016) will be those that embrace the shift towards a Safe System and begin work now on the interventions required to close the gap between current performance and the performance associated with a genuinely safe road traffic system.
This requires understanding not only of the current system’s safety weaknesses, but also of what change may be possible in the short-term to achieve Safe System compliant outputs. Sufficient management leadership within government road safety agencies (including road authorities), as outlined in Chapter 3, The Road Safety Management System, is essential to achieve meaningful progress in the delivery of these substantially different outputs.