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常静道路条件交通安全英文文献翻译

作者:高考题库网
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2021-01-18 09:33
tags:翻译, 交通运输, 工程科技

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2021年1月18日发(作者:致爱)
Vision Zero – Implementing a policy for traffic safety
The scope of this paper is to outline, in a general way, the safety
philosophy inherent in present road- and street design, trace the origin
of this philosophy, and to present the principles for a new design of
streets and roads. It will be argued that deficiencies in the present road
design philosophy are the main cause of the global road safety crisis,
clearly indicating its man-made nature. A brief description is made of
the decision process leading to the establishment of Vision Zero as
Sweden’s Traffic Safety Policy in 1997.
Following an analysis of the problem, suggestions are made for finding
solutions. The solutions are based on some of the principles in Vision
Zero. They include a new basic mechanism for creating error- tolerance in
the road system, and new design principles for road- and street design.
The tradition of “blaming the victim” is hereby questioned and focus
is put on the need for professionals to act based on these new standards.
During the last 10 years the fatalities in Sweden have dropped from
approximately 550/year to 450/year. Roads redesigned with median barriers
have an 80% reduction in fatalities. Streets with 30 km/h design speed
show similar results. This indicates that measures derived from Vision
Zero strategy are effective but that large scale implementation has not
yet been done.
1. The process
The Swedish Road Administration (SRA) had an overall responsibility
for Road Traffic Safety in Sweden since 1993. This responsibility was
further clarified by the Government in 1996. Sweden has very small
Ministries (number of personnel). As a consequence Administrations like
the SRA often have semi-political tasks like development of policies and
targets. Decisions on policy, long term targets and overall budgets are
made by the Government or the Parliament but development is made in the
Administration.
Following the elections in the autumn 1994 Sweden got a new Minister
for Transportation. The Minister declared that traffic safety would be
one of her priorities. A dialog was started between the Minister’s Staff
and the SRA on how the Minister could make traffic safety a prioritized
subject.
In the spring of 1994 the SRA together with the major stakeholders
for traffic safety had presented a short term program for action for the
years of 1994–2000. It had the character of continuing earlier work but
with more emphasis on cooperation between key actors and focus on results.
Directly after this program was launched the SRA started to develop some
basic ideas for a long term strategy for traffic safety. It had been
recognised for some time that the contemporary traffic safety paradigm
had some problems (Johansson, 1991). Part of this problem was a lack of
expected benefits of many measures, something that was recognised by among
others Gerald Wilde (best described in Wilde, 2001). A comprehensive
overview can be found in OECD (1990).
The new safety paradigm, Vision Zero is built around the basic idea
that even if not all crashes or collisions can be avoided, all severe
injuries can, in principle, be avoided. The basic idea was to build a
“safe system” where all predicted crashes and collisions had tolerable
health losses. The Minister and her Staff recognised that it was possible
to work with the ideas behind Vision Zero in a political setting and
quickly adopted the basic ideas, developed a text (translated in Belin
et al., 1997), and took it to the Parliament in 1997, where it was accepted
by all political parties (Tingvall, 1998). Since then, the Parliament has
repeated this decision on a number of occasions. The notion of “Vision
Zero” has become synonymous with the concept of “high political
ambitions” in a number of other areas as well. The Government in 2008
took a decision on a Vision Zero for suicide. Much of the political debate
on Vision Zero between 1995 and the Parliament’s decision in 1997 was
concentrated on the question”How many fatalities can we accept” At this
time Sweden had around 500 fatalities in road traffic per year.
Comparisons where made with the safety level for other transport modes,
(clearly a zero fatality goal), occupational safety (about 50 fatalities
annually), electricity (about five fatalities annually). From this
political analysis it was concluded that a zero fatality target was the
only justifiable target for road traffic.
During the same time period SRA and its network concentrated work on
developing strategies for radically lowering fatality risks in road
traffic, typically aiming at reducing fatality risks with a factor 10.
Examples follow later in this paper.
2. Vision Zero
In 1997 the Swedish Parliament passed a bill on Traffic Safety where
it was stated that:
“Vision Zero means that eventually no one will be killed or
seriously injured within the road transport system.”
Vision Zero does not presume that all accidents that result in
personal property damage or in less serious injuries must be eliminated.
These occurrences are not considered to be an essential element in the
road traffic safety problem even if they can entail large costs for the
State, county councils, municipalities and individuals. Rather, focus
shall be placed on those incidents that lead to a person being killed or
seriously injured. Vision Zero also proposes an ethical approach to the
health problems associated with road traffic:
“It can never be ethically acceptable that people are killed or
seriously injured when moving within the road transport system.”
Vision Zero is said to be a long-term goal for the design and
functioning of the road transport system. What is important is to realise
that the Vision Zero approach will alter the aim of the work on road traffic
safety; ., from attempting to reduce the number of accidents to the
formulation of an explicit goal: to eliminate the risk of chronic health
impairment caused by a traffic accident. This new approach will also alter
the question from “what can we do” to “what must we do”
Vision Zero presumes a new division of responsibility for road traffic
safety within the road transport system. The responsibility for road
traffic safety should be introduced along the following lines.
1. The designers of the system are always ultimately responsible for
the design, operations and use of the road transport system and are thereby
responsible for the level of safety within the entire system.
2. Road users are responsible for following the rules for using the
road transport system set by the system designers.
3. If road users fail to obey these rules due to a lack of knowledge,
acceptance or ability, or if injuries do occur, the system designers are
required to take the necessary further steps to counteract people being
killed and seriously injured.
Taking the Vision Zero approach means that paying attention to human
life and health is an absolute requirement in the design and functioning
of the road transport system. This implies that road traffic safety issues,
in similarity to environmental issues, must be clearly integrated in all
the processes that affect road traffic safety in the road transport system
and be based on the following:
“The level of violence that the human body can tolerate without being
killed or seriously injured shall be the basic parameter in the design
of the road transport system.”
It is upon this principle that the future society with safe road
traffic can develop: through designing and constructing roads, vehicles
and transport services so that the level of violence that can be tolerated
by the human being is not exceeded; and through the effective contribution
of different support systems such as rules and regulations, education,
information, surveillance, rescue services, care and rehabilitation.
With this as the basis, there will be a positive demand for new and
effective solutions that can contribute to a road transport system where
human needs, prerequisites and demands are in focus.
“It is true, that 95% of all crashes or collisions depend on human
error, but according to Vision Zero philosophy, 95% of the solutions are
in changing roads, streets or vehicles.”Some simple examples follow:
(1) Drivers in Sweden used to have a 92% seat-belt wearing rate. Good
but not good enough. EuroNCaP1 established a protocol for seat-belt
reminders a couple of years ago having the effect that 70% of new cars
sold in Sweden 2005 had seat-belt reminders. The drivers of these cars
have a seat-belt wearing rate of 99%. Hence, the problem of seat-belt
wearing will gradually be solved at a very low cost.
(2) Alcohol: All over the world alcohol and traffic is a big problem,
even if improvements can be made with strict legislation and enforcement.
By demonstrating a demand for safe transport primarily by professional
transporters a demand for “proven sober” transports has risen. In Sweden
about 50% of all school buses have alcohol interlocks (a device that checks
if the driver is sober). A new generation of Alco locks are coming on the
market (at least four competitors in Europe/USA) reducing price and
improving performance.
In this way a car that reminds you to use your seat-belt, and checks
your breath for alcohol, or otherwise checks your performance, and assists
you to be a better, safer driver. Different aspects of the Vision Zero
philosophy can be found in (Tingvall et al., 1996, 1997; Tingvall, 1998,
2007; Belin et al., 1997).
3. Traditional road design philosophy
The traditional road-oriented safety philosophy has as its starting
point the ‘‘accident”. Accident statistics are normally based on
police reports made up on traffic accidents known to the police. These
statistics have been used by road authorities world-wide for describing
and analysing the road safety problem associated with roads and road
design. It is important to notice that the conceptsof traffic accidents
and (bad) road safety are not synonymous. Many accidents could be an
indicator of (bad) safety, but if the accidents do not lead to personal
injuries they are not. Road safety is a ‘loss of health’ problem. A crash
or accident without loss of health is no safety problem, only a cost. But
the thesis put forward in this paper is another, namely that by choosing
the ‘‘accident” perspective, you get a safety philosophy that at its
best reduces accidents, not necessarily personal injuries. And, as all
modern definitions of the traffic safety problem define it as a health
problem (health loss) the accident perspective misses the target.
Accident analysis shows typically that 90–95% of all accidents are
caused by road users. Society’s most fundamental response to accident
prevention has been rules and regulations for road user behaviour. The
purpose of traffic legislation is mainly to simplify the tasks for road
users, making the risk of accident lower. In many cases this works as
intended. But if focus is shifted to the effect of the traffic regulation
on health loss, the pattern is less clear. Examples could be, for instance,
traffic lights and pedestrian crossings. Installing traffic lights
typically results in fewer crashes, but more severe injuries. Pedestrian
crossings generally do not lead to a safer crossing for pedestrians; they
facilitate crossing a street but provide no safety in themselves.
When it comes to road- and street design the dominant safety strategy
overall has been to increase space for drivers and vehicles. That is, wider
lanes, wider roads, straighter roads, larger crossings etc. The reasoning
behind this is straightforward and logical; if drivers run off the road,
make the road a little bit wider so there is room for manoeuvring the
vehicle back into the lane and keeping the vehicle on the road; if drivers
run off the road in bends, try making the road a little bit straighter
thereby avoiding accidents in bends. This strategy has had some success
in reducing the number of accidents, but even the effect on the accident
risk has been questioned (Hauer, 1999). The strategy to create space for
evasive action has not been successful in reducing fatalities and other
severe injuries. In fact, everything else considered, this strategy
increases fatalities and other health losses. A wide, strait road has more
fatalities than a narrow road with many curves if everything else is the
same. The reason is simple: the most predominant effect of creating more
space is an increase in driving speed, which means higher levels of kinetic
energy in crashes. Higher energy levels lead to more severe health losses,
all other things being equal. This increase in speed has two reasons; first
road administrations normally set a higher speed limit on roads that are
wide and straight because they are said to have a higher safety standard,
and drivers tend to drive faster anyway on these roads.
This safety philosophy to build wide, straight roads and streets is
one of the main contributions to the present global road safety crisis.
The result is an increase, by one or two factors of 10, in the risks of
severe personal injury or fatality, compared to the Vision Zero design
philosophy described later in this paper. No other design parameter has
an impact of this magnitude. As an example Swedish 2-lane highways with
a speed limit of 110 km/h had one of the most severe injury pattern recorded
ever; out of three persons injured on these roads, one was killed.
Relatively new Chinese highways produce more than 1 killed/km/year. The
main difference between the Swedish rural roads and the Chinese highways
is that the latter have a large quantity of vulnerable road users, who
are ‘‘separated” from motorised vehicles only by the “wideness” of
the roads and traffic regulations . pedestrian crossings. It has been
shown on the Swedish roads mentioned in the example that the fatalities
can be reduced by 85–90% by applying mid- and side barriers. The Chinese
highways mentioned above could, at least in principle, be rebuilt reducing
fatalities with up to 99%.
A note must be made on motorisation and its effect on overall safety
in a country. Sweden has approximately cars/inhabitant whereas China is
only in its beginning as a motorised country with cars/inhabitant. The
World Bank has noted that the number of persons killed in a country turns
from an increasing trend to a decreasing trend when the GNP/capita reaches
approximately 8000 US$$ (Kopits and Kropper, 2003). A hypothesis based on
this data could be that the change in composition of traffic, that is,
the mixture of protected/unprotected road users reaches a critical limit
at that stage of economic development. That is, the separation between
vehicles and unprotected road users reaches a certain level which has an
overall good effect on road safety. It should also be noted that this
separation in (most) societies is spontaneous and not engineered. It is
a function of more and more people becoming motorised (car or bus) and
the number of vulnerable road users decreasing, especially on rural roads.
The challenge in a developing country is of course to engineer this
separation at an early stage of motorisation.
4. Design principles in Vision Zero

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