Towards a safe system
Victoria’s move towards a Safe System approach to road safety represents a significant shift in thinking about road safety. By taking a total view of the combined factors involved in road safety, the Safe System approach aims to design and build a transport system that will protect responsible road users and reduce the number of deaths and serious injuries.
The Safe System approach recognises that even with a focus on prevention, road crashes will occur – therefore, the road system must be designed to be more forgiving of human error and attempt to manage crash forces to survivable levels, while reducing the contribution of unsafe road user behaviour to road crashes
A Safe System is one where the likelihood of a road crash is reduced, and where any crash that does occur minimises death and serious injury. The Safe System approach identifies the shared responsibility of road system and vehicle designers, providers and users in achieving this outcome.
Achieving a Safe System of road travel is based on an understanding that the human body is vulnerable and unlikely to survive an uncushioned impact at a speed of more than 30km/h. Even relatively low speeds can kill or seriously injure unless the vehicle and the road and roadside environment take account of the physical vulnerability of all road users.
The Safe System approach encourages a better understanding of the interaction between the key elements of the road system: road users, vehicles, roads and roadsides, and travel speeds. Exploring these interactions maximises the potential advantage of initiatives in reducing deaths and injuries from linking different road safety activities.
Under the Safe System approach, road users have a responsibility to comply with the rules to ensure that they act within the limits of the system’s design.
The table below shows the estimated crash impact speeds, based on the safest vehicles, where the forces are likely to exceed the tolerance of the human body (in other words, those crashes that are likely to result in death or serious injury).
| Impact speed | Road user type | Crash type |
| 30km/h+ | Vehicle occupant | Side impact crash with fixed roadside objects such as poles and trees |
| 40km/h+ | Pedestrian, cyclist, motorcyclist | Impact with other vehicles |
| 50km/h+ | Vehicle occupant | Side impact crash with another vehicle |
| 70km/h+ | Vehicle occupant | Head-on crash with a similar vehicle |
The Safe System approach includes:
- designing and maintaining roads and roadsides to reduce risk to as low as reasonably practical
- setting speed limits according to the safety of the road and roadside
- advising, educating and encouraging road users to comply with road rules, be unimpaired and alert, and drive according to the prevailing conditions
- encouraging consumers to purchase safer vehicles with primary safety features that reduce the likelihood of a crash, such as electronic stability control, and secondary safety features that reduce injury severity in a crash, such as side curtain airbags.
The success of the Safe System approach is dependent on road users acting within the limits of the system’s design. Hence the importance given to ensuring the community becomes more aware of the risks associated with road travel, and that people are able to make better informed decisions on issues such as vehicle choice, speed and behaviour.
Additionally, through enforcement initiatives, the Safe System approach will protect the wider community from the actions of a minority of road users who repeatedly put the community at risk with anti-social behaviour.
Delivering the Safe System
The Safe System will deliver reductions in deaths and severity of injuries by coordinating the management of all the components of the transport system that impact on safety. The diagram below shows the main system components and relationships.
