I attended the Road Safety Conference today in Vivo City. The keynote speech was delivered by Dr. Kent Gustafson, the Research Director of the Swedish National Road & Transport Research Institute. He explained the motivation and the on going development of “Vision Zero”- a human-centered approach to road safety policy and planning.
“Vision Zero” was established in 1997 to guide the transport policy and strategies. It highlighted that system designer need to take a bigger responsibility towards road safety and must follow the “Ethical rules”:
This approach is contrary to the common practice of only blaming the road users when accident occurs. Indeed, I thought, if architects must carry a heavy responsibility to the safety of the buildings they design, it only make sense that the system designer should be make responsible for their road design for the public.
Based on these “ethical rules”, the bio-mechanic capacity of human body to tolerate impact during accident become the limiting factor for speed in any new system. In other word, the speed of any part in the system can only be as fast as the safety can be ensured.
A list of “best practice” in this Vision Zero about types of infrastructure and related speed limites:
Locations with possible conflicts between pedestrians and cars (30 km/h)
Intersections with possible frontal impacts between cars (50 km/h)
Roads with possible frontal impacts between cars (70 km/h)
Roads with no possibility of a side impact or frontal impact between cars (100+km/h)
Read more about Vision Zero
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In addition, Prof. Chin Hoong Chor shared an insightful study about the cost of traffic accidents in Singapore. It was concluded that the total cost (lost of human productivity, damage, and human lost-as calculated by court) of a fatal accident is ~SGD800,000 and ~SGD200,000 for a typical serious accident.
His presentation was very much underscored by an victim (sorry, name forgotten) sharing his personal experience of a traffic accident last year.
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Mr. Ho Seng Tim of LTA presents how road safety has improved over the years in Singapore. A lot has been done from infrastructure, equipment to education. These efforts help Singapore to become one of the safest place to drive. I do wish more emphasis will be put on the “other” road users. Examples like Bus stop bollards, school warning zone are good start. I would like to see more of such infrastructure improvement to safe guard road users other then drivers. One problem I share with Mr. Ho after the conference is the danger at the traffic-light signaled cross junction. As a pedestrian, you should NOT cross when you see the green figure, you must first check your right side to be sure there is no car turning into you way before you can cross safely. This arrangement obviously put the convenient of drivers ahead of the safety of pedestrian (including school kids and elderly). Since all traffic light are programmed by computer, I asked if it is possible to experiment other safer timing option for the signal, Mr. Ho confirmed that is technically feasible 🙂