Road design, safety and Vision Zero

[danbrotherston]

Please, answer for me, why are people in Sweden not willing to kill people, but we are?

Sweden set the Vision Zero goal (zero traffic deaths by 2020) in 1997, 22 years ago. They have reduced traffic deaths by about 50%, but the fatality rate has now been pretty much flat for the last five years.

So the Swedes are still willing to "kill" 250 people per year.

Your choice of the verb "to kill" is (probably intentionally) highly provocative/incendiary, given that it means "to cause the death of a person". And I think most people would agree that road design is not the cause of all (or even most) traffic deaths in Canada, or in other countries.

No, the Swedes *ARE* killing 250 people a year, which they consider unacceptable, and believe that the number should be zero.

We are killing ~2000 people per year, and with respect to road design, consider that number perfectly acceptable...or more specifically, are not willing to make any meaningful changes to road design which could reduce that number.  We sure are willing to blame drivers, pedestrians, cyclists, weather even, but the absolute refusal to make safety the priority when designing roads is the single defining difference between Sweden and here.

And yes, Sweden has not completed their Vision Zero project.  I doubt they ever will, just as I doubt there will be a day when we never have aviation disasters.  That does not mean it should not be the goal.  Further, if our goal had been to get deaths to zero 20 years ago as well, does that mean we could be killing merely ~1500 people now? Which of those 500 people who would be alive per year today are worth the sacrifice?

And yes, I am using incendiary language because this is an incendiary issue. It is unacceptable to me that people should die on our roads, and it is inconceivable to me that others think this is okay.

As for the cause, I don't care about the cause, nobody should care about the cause, they should care about what can be done to mitigate and reduce the risk.

Please consider a specific example, which I really like.  One of the most serious types of collisions is crossover collisions on rural roads, they're high speed which leads to high fatalities.  In Sweden most rural two lane highways built or reconstructed in the past 20 years have been rebuilt with a cable barrier in the middle. This restricts passing to sections which have passing zones.  This means that if a driver is doing 75, we all must go 75.  It's inconvenient, annoying, and when there are farming vehicles, probably a cause of a few legitimate delays.  It does increase the cost of the road, cables aren't free, and building more passing zones isn't so cheap (although Sweden usually just used the existing road shoulder).  Yet it's been incredibly effective in nearly eliminating crossover collisions as they are no longer possible.  How do people here respond to that idea?  Both, in this forum, and in the region in general?  I don't care that the cause is aggressive angry driving. I don't think we can ever fix that, although, if you have a way, I'm happy to hear it.  But these barriers would help mitigate those collisions at reasonable cost, and reasonable inconvenience.  Why would we oppose them.