Working towards Vision Zero:
Building a road safety strategy around the Safe System

Wednesday 1st September 2021 at 11:00 (Duration 30 mins + Q&A)
Presented in association with:

Speaker: Tanya Fosdick
Research Director at Agilysis and Principal Research Associate at Road Safety Analysis

Tanya is Research Director at Agilysis and Principal Research Associate at Road Safety Analysis. She specialises in translating complex evidence into practice, seeking to bridge the gap between academia and practitioners to improve the quality of road safety interventions.

In this Masterclass, Tanya will talk through her recent experiences working with UK road safety partnerships to help them to look strategically to the next 10 years.

Tanya discussed the challenges facing partner organisations when trying to adopt a Safe System approach and work towards achieving Vision Zero, and specifically:

• What does talk of a safe system mean for partnerships and practitioners and how can a safe system approach be adopted locally.
• Philosophical and practical challenges facing partnerships and practitioners.
• Changing from collision reduction to the elimination of fatal or serious injury collisions.
• Moving from preventing all collisions to accepting collisions will happen, and how to ensure there are no fatalities or serious injuries when they do.
• Governance - having the right people with the right decision making powers in your group.
• Setting ambitious but realistic long term goals and interim targets.
• Why safe road users are a fundamental element of the safe system but can present the greatest challenges.
• How to embrace the concept of shared responsibility and work with road users rather than delivering to them.
• Having an honest review to examine strategy, governance, policies, priorities and accountability.

Questions answered from ARRM members:

• What are the most difficult elements of the safe system to build into a road safety strategy?
• When speaking of governance and stakeholder groups there was no mention of the commercial organisations or other groups such as walkers. Is there a reason for this or do you envisage they are represented in other ways?
• Do you see a benefit in the RCIB and how do you see this fitting with the safe systems approach?
• How far have UK road partnerships integrated road safety into their policies to create indivisible and interconnected strategies?
• How have other partnerships worked to get the right people with the right decision making powers to the table?
• How should partnerships look to start the process of an honest review?
• Is there a template for a vision zero strategy that partnerships can use?
• How would you suggest partnerships engage the ambulance service now they are more often regionally based rather than by county?