Does Vision Zero spell trouble for street designers?

The Vision Zero philosopher, Claes Tingvall
But is it realistic, or even ethical, to make users like these obey the designers’ rules? (click images to enlarge)
The latest accessory for highway designers?

Anyone out there come across 'Vision Zero'? It's 'a philosophy of road safety that eventually no one will be killed or seriously injured within the road transport system'. I wonder how that idea strikes you. Perhaps you're thinking, 'Isn't that what all road safety effort is ultimately directed towards anyway?' or maybe your snap response is, 'Pipe dream!'.

The reason I mention it is that Vision Zero appears to be gaining ground in the UK and, yet, while the headline is hard to argue with, the proposed method of its realisation could, in my view, adversely and unreasonably affect how anyone involved in designing the public highway does their work. I'd be interested to know what you think.

First off, Vision Zero rose to prominence as the foundation for a Road Traffic Safety Bill passed by the Swedish Parliament in 1997. The central theme is that safety cannot be traded for mobility and here I make my first interjection to say that this theme could be expanded to state that safety shouldn't be traded for aesthetics either.

A criticism that is commonly, and not always without justification, levelled at some who espouse non-conventional approaches to highway design (e.g. de-segregation of vehicles and pedestrians, de-cluttering generally and a stronger focus on how things look) is that they appear willing to trade a few KSIs (people killed or seriously injured) for a more attractive streetscape.

My own position on this is that 'good urban design' cannot claim actually to be good if it is achieved at the cost of putting more people into either hospital or the morgue. In this regard, a number of recent schemes have thankfully demonstrated that streets can be made both more attractive and safer.

Moving on, Claes Tingvall (one of Vision Zero's progenitors), states that Vision Zero is an expression of the 'ethical imperative' that, 'It can never be ethically acceptable that people are killed or seriously injured when moving within the road transport system'.

My second interjection is to raise the question of how we stand if so-called 'ethical imperatives' conflict. I am reminded here of some thoughts that arose as I read 'The Death of Common Sense' by a chap called Philip K Howard (I recommend it highly), in which he wrote about different groups of people asserting their 'rights'.

Put simply, if someone's 'right' conflicts with someone else's 'right', both 'rights' cannot be 'rights'! In the same way, if someone's 'ethical imperative' conflicts with someone else's, one or both cannot be quite as imperative as their proponents think. Please bear this in mind as we continue.

While the Vision Zero philosophy does not set a specific target date for achieving zero KSIs, you'll be relieved to hear that the vision is not to be delivered merely by thinking good thoughts. I doubt, however, that you'll be quite so relieved to hear that it's to be achieved by making you (if you're a highway designer in any way) more directly responsible for the outcome.

This is a reaction to an existing situation in which the user has, according to the philosophers, 'almost total responsibility for safety'. Those haunted by the spectre of corporate manslaughter may not agree with this assessment and may in any case consider that users jolly well ought to have primary responsibility for their own safety.

The UK Roads Board's December 2005 report on 'Highway Risk and Liability Claims' summarised the current state of affairs in this country as follows: 'Court rulings repeatedly state that road users are responsible for their own safety and have a duty to take the road as they find it. This defines road users as intelligent beings, able and expected to exercise their own judgement.'

These same rulings further emphasise that, 'It is not necessary for the design of a scheme to take that independence of judgement out of the hands of the road user'.

In pretty sharp contrast, Vision Zero explicitly states that:

1. The designers of the road transport system are always ultimately responsible for the design, operation and use of the system and thereby responsible for the level of safety within it.

2. Road users are responsible for following the rules for using the road transport system set by the designers.

3. If road users fail to obey these rules due to lack of knowledge, acceptance or ability, or if injuries occur, the system designers are required to take necessary further steps to counteract people being killed or seriously injured.

There is a huge amount to take on board in these three short statements but I only have the space for now to encourage you to take the time to consider their implications for your own work and see how you like them, and also to make two concluding remarks.

'I'd only feel willing to assume 'ultimate respon-sibility' for users if I were also to be granted 'ultimate power' over their actions'

Recent 'innovative' street design schemes in the UK appear to have been successful (including in road safety terms) precisely because users (of all types) are encouraged by the designs to take more responsibility for themselves and negotiate more directly with others. Such designs are a reaction to a heavy-handed engineering approach that in many respects tried to achieve what Vision Zero apparently wants (i.e. to take the matter of safety largely out of users' hands) yet generally failed to deliver sufficiently safe environments.

Finally, and returning to the matter of conflicting so-called 'ethical imperatives', I must say that, as a designer, I'd only feel willing to assume 'ultimate responsibility' for users if I were also to be granted what one might call 'ultimate power' over their actions. If I may address you as a user: do you think it's ethically acceptable for me (or some other designer) to have more or less absolute control over your freedom to move in the public highway? I didn't think so.