Pedestrian safety - Global Road Safety Partnership

Pedestrian safety: a road safety manual for decision-makers and practitioners
with traffic regulations, system designers and operators have a responsibility to
develop a transport system that is as safe as possible for users.
• Promotion of ethical values in road safety: The ethical value underlying the Safe
System approach is that any level of serious trauma arising from the road transport
system is unacceptable. Humans can learn to behave more safely, but errors will
inevitably occur on some occasions. The errors may lead to crashes, but death and
serious injury are not inevitable consequences.
• Promotion of societal values: In addition to ensuring safety, the road transport
system is expected to contribute to overall societal values, particularly in three
areas – economic development, human and environmental health, and individual
choice.
The Safe System approach has several benefits as a framework for pedestrian safety:
• Examination of a range of risk factors. Pedestrian safety should be researched
from a systems point of view to allow for consideration of the many factors that
expose pedestrians to risk, such as vehicle speed, poor road design, and inadequate
enforcement of traffic laws and regulations. Effective planning for pedestrian safety
requires a comprehensive understanding of the risk factors involved. It is difficult
to achieve this understanding, however, when research focuses only on one or
two risk factors. The Safe Systems framework moves pedestrian safety research
away from a narrow focus on a single or a few risk factors. Module 3 describes the
development of data sources in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, which together provide a
thorough picture of the extent of injuries and risk factors for pedestrians and other
road users.
• Integration of comprehensive interventions. Improving pedestrian safety requires
attention to vehicle design, road infrastructure, traffic controls such as speed
limits, and enforcement of traffic laws and regulations – the focus areas that
comprise the Safe System approach. A narrow focus on any single aspect is less
effective than taking an integrated approach to the multiple factors involved in
pedestrian safety.
• Assimilation of lessons learned. The Safe System approach provides a basis for
low- and middle-income countries to avoid mistakes that were made by a number
of high-income countries that designed roads mainly with motor vehicles in
mind, and without adequate attention to pedestrian needs. As countries witness
increasing numbers of motor vehicles, improvements are needed to infrastructure
for pedestrians as well as for vehicles, rather than focusing solely on pedestrian
behaviour as the key factor influencing pedestrian safety. A common feature of
pedestrian travel environments in low- and middle-income countries is mixed
traffic where pedestrians, vehicles and bicycles share the same road space, with
few or no dedicated infrastructural facilities for pedestrians. Some progress in
addressing the neglect of pedestrians in road design has been observed in China
and India (4). Modules 2 and 4 provide examples of road design measures aimed
at improving pedestrian safety in low- and middle-income countries.
1: Why is addressing pedestrian safety necessary?
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