News
At Guidance to Zero we believe in sharing good examples of what we and others do in order to increase safe and sustainable transport around the globe.
Knowledge transfer from the founders of Vision Zero – on the three dimensions ethics, responsibility and solution
It will soon be 30 years since the birth of Vision Zero and road safety became something everybody working with traffic and urban planning is expected to have knowledge of. A generational change is now taking place where the founders of Vision Zero are planning their retirement and many of those who are starting their working lives lack the knowledge that formed the basis for the changed way of thinking about traffic and road safety. Today, when road safety is a part of the Agenda2030, it is also vital to work with a holistic approach and understand in which ways road safety is important and a driving force in the sustainability work. To just follow guidelines and requirements someone else has developed without understanding the background to them leads to priorities and deviations being made suboptimally. For example, to achieve an increased proportion of active travel, the conditions for pedestrians and cyclists must also be safe for traffic.
How do we ensure that conclusions and experiences from previous research and work live on when new generations take over? For example, the very essence of Vision Zero.
The report is written in Swedish with an English summary. It's published on SAFERs publication page.
The 4th Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety
The Fourth Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety will be held in Marrakech, Morocco on 18-20 February 2025, with the theme of "Commit to Life", will bring leaders and experts together to accelerate action towards the Sustainable Development Goals' target of halving global road deaths by 2030.
Road safety is an urgent and preventable global health crisis. Road crashes claim the lives of nearly 1.2 million people around the world each year - around 3200 every day - and are the leading cause of death among children and young people aged 5-29.
Focus areas for the conference include road safety governance, emerging trends in mobility, financing, working with the private sector, road traffic injury data, connections with related Sustainable Development Goals' agendas, and as the first-ever Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety to be held on the African continent, a focus on progress in Africa.
Saving lives beyond 2025
The Academic Expert Group has given six recommendations to the 4th Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety in Marrakech 2025. They build on the recommendations from 2020 but target specifically on the responsibilities of organizations for improving road safety as part of their occupational health and safety obligations. You can read them all here.
1. Compliance
Compliance with road safety best practices is primary the responsibility of the organization.
Prevention activities as part of occupational health and safety.
Compliance should be addressed by traffic law enforcement.
2. Setting example
City governments should demonstrate how occupational health and safety can be a key for road safety progress.
All jurisdictional governments are to be explicit about the responsibilities for road safety as part of occupational health and safety. They are also to use procurement to incentivize road safety performance.
Governments routinely monitor and enforce these obligations.
3. The power of finance
Banks, investors, insurance companies and auditors should address road safety across their value chains as a prerequisite for financial involvement.
Organizations receiving investment funds should report on their road safety footprint across their value chains, setting crash reduction targets, and implementing evidence-based interventions where necessary.
Collaborative financial initiatives should specifically include road safety as a core element.
4. Management systems
Organizations should purchase vehicles with the highest safety performance, and take responsibility for speed, fitness to drive, use of appropriate protective gear, and route selection.
Organizations should report on its safety footprint, targets, actions, and results.
5. Safety culture
Organizations should introduce and nurture a safety-first principle where employees can expect the safest working environment.
Encouragement for employees to identify and report safety risks without concern about punishment or retribution.
Commitment and action by organizational leadership to adopt policies and processes for transparent communication of safety performance.
6. Automotive sector's role
The Automotive sector need to realize the potential benefits of safer vehicles in the global fleet.
Take responsibility for road safety across their organizational footprint, including transparent data collection, problem identification, implementing evidence-based interventions, and reporting on progress.
Manufacture and market the safest possible vehicles.
Market vehicles with the highest level of safety performance for all global markets.
VISION ZERO: REVISITING WHAT SWEDEN MEANS BY VISION ZERO AND HOW DO WE GET THERE?
In the November issue of World Transport Policy and Practice Journal the founders of Guidance to Zero, Maria Håkansson and Sanna Eveby, got published with their article Vision Zero: Revisiting what Sweden means by Vision Zero and how do we get there?
In the article you can read up on the past, present and future of Vision Zero. You'll find the whole paper here: World Transport Journal volume 29.2
Fair Transport
Do you know about Fair Transport?
Fair Transport was created as an initiative of the haulage companies. The idea was to make sustainable transport visible, provide transport buyers with transparent and reliable information and support haulers during the change process.
Today Fair Transport is a sustainability certification for road freight transport with over 880 certified actors. Fair Transport certification comprises 3 levels of added value. The criteria for each level differ, but in general cover the areas of climate and the environment, road safety and responsibility. The certification is CSRD compatible.
Fair Transport are active in Sweden and Norway, to find out more about how they work check out there website or contact them here.
Leadership for safe roads
In the beginning of December we had the pleasure to visit Trafikverkets webinar on Leadership for safe roads to talk about how FIA Road Safety Index can be used as a tool. The webinar is in Swedish and there are a lot of interesting stakeholders and frontrunners to listen to. You can hear us at 1:10 here.
Good examples of reporting on traffic safety within companies
Many companies and organizations address traffic safety issues in a serious and comprehensive way within their own operations. But in order to grow, and to support those who struggle today, they need to communicate about their work and get inspired by others.
Companies and organizations communicate through their web-page and there annual report. Traffic safety is both a part of an organizations social sustainability impact as well as a work environment issue. In this project we are focusing on annual reports and what they say about traffic safety ang how the companies works with the issue.
We read through over 30 reports to find inspiring examples of a good reporting culture. The report will be finalized in the end of January 2025.
The work is conducted in cooperating with Arfors Management AB and has been granted funds from Skyltfonden. It will be written in Swedish.
Knowledge transfer from the founders of Vision Zero to new generations, on the three dimensions ethics, responsibility and solutions
Guidance to Zero and the city of Gothenburg have been granted funds from SAFER idea exploration program to conduct a pre-study with the aim to identify the knowledge gap that has been found in several municipal organizations, define what of new research and new practice needs to be included and review how the knowledge most easily reaches those who need it. The target group is traffic and community planners as well as procurers in public organizations.
It will soon be 30 years since the birth of Vision Zero and road safety became something everybody working with traffic and urban planning is expected to have knowledge of. A generational change is now taking place where the founders of Vision Zero are planning their retirement and many of those who are starting their working lives lack the knowledge that formed the basis for the changed way of thinking about traffic and road safety. Today, when road safety is a part of the Agenda 2030, it is also vital to work with a holistic approach and understand in which ways road safety is important and a driving force in the sustainability work. To just follow guidelines and requirements someone else has developed without understanding the background to them leads to priorities and deviations being made suboptimally. For example; to achieve an increased proportion of active travel, the conditions for pedestrians and cyclists must also be safe for traffic.
How dreams can become reality
To celebrate Vision Zero 20 years our CEO Maria Håkansson co-authored a book focusing on the journey from idea to vision to the systematic approach that runs through both infrastructure planning and vehicle design today.
In the book we hear from the forerunners and visionaries and we get to follow the political and technical advances that were made in the first 20 years of this ground breaking policy innovation.
The book is available to read here.
