In the aftermath of losing our two youngest daughters, AnnaLeah (17) and Mary (13), due to a truck underride crash on May 4, 2013, we became aware of far too many facts about tra ffic fatalities. In an e ffort to do more than just put a bandaid on the problem, we launched a campaign to call for major change in how safety laws and regulations are determined. Th€is book is a compilation of our request for a National Vision Zero Goal and for a Vision Zero rulemaking policy. It includes our petition letters to President Obama and DOT Secretary Foxx--along with the signatures and comments of thousands of people who signed the petitions and are speaking up with us to call for a move Towards Zero Crash Deaths & Serious Injuries.

This open access handbook provides a comprehensive treatment of Vision Zero, an innovative policy on public road safety developed in Sweden. Covering all the major topics of the subject, the book starts out with a thorough examination of the philosophy, ideas and principles behind Vision Zero. It looks at conditions for the effectiveness of the policy, principles of safety and responsibility as well as critique on the policy. Next, the handbook focuses on how the Vision Zero ideas have been received and implemented in various legislations and countries worldwide. It takes into account the way Vision Zero is looked at in the context of international organizations such as the WHO, the UN, and the OECD. This allows for a comparison of systems, models and effects. The third part of the handbook discusses the management and leadership aspects, including ISO standards, equity issues, other goals for traffic and transportation, and opportunities for the car industry. Part four delves into tools, technologies and organizational measures that contribute to the implementation of Vision Zero in road traffic. Examples of specific elements discussed are urban and rural road designs, human factor designs, and avoiding drunk and distracted driving. The final part of the handbook offers perspectives on the transfer of Vision Zero policy to other areas, ranging from air traffic to suicide prevention and nuclear energy. Vision Zero is a public road safety policy including both a long-term goal that no one shall be killed or seriously injured as a consequence of accidents in road traffic and a safety principle stating that the design and function of the road transport system shall be adapted to meet the requirements that follow from that goal. It is a new road safety paradigm which has resulted in new types of responsibilities among stakeholders, technological innovations, and new strategies and organizational measures to achieve a safe system. The road safety work based on Vision Zero has shown promising results, and although Sweden has not yet reached a safe system, the number of fatalities and severe injuries has decreased substantially. This is an open access book.

Car Safety Wars is a gripping history of the hundred-year struggle to improve the safety of American automobiles and save lives on the highways. Described as the “equivalent of war” by the Supreme Court, the battle involved the automobile industry, unsung and long-forgotten safety heroes, at least six US Presidents, a reluctant Congress, new auto technologies, and, most of all, the mindset of the American public: would they demand and be willing to pay for safer cars? The “Car Safety Wars” were at first won by consumers and safety advocates. The major victory was the enactment in 1966 of a ground breaking federal safety law. The safety act was pushed through Congress over the bitter objections of car manufacturers by a major scandal involving General Motors, its private detectives, Ralph Nader, and a gutty cigar-chomping old politician. The act is a success story for government safety regulation. It has cut highway death and injury rates by over seventy percent in the years since its enactment, saving more than two million lives and billions of taxpayer dollars. But the car safety wars have never ended. GM has recently been charged with covering up deadly defects resulting in multiple ignition switch shut offs. Toyota has been fined for not reporting fatal unintended acceleration in many models. Honda and other companies have—for years—sold cars incorporating defective air bags. These current events, suggesting a failure of safety regulation, may serve to warn us that safety laws and agencies created with good intentions can be corrupted and strangled over time. This book suggests ways to avoid this result, but shows that safer cars and highways are a hard road to travel. We are only part of the way home.

It is possible to eliminate death and serious injury from Canada’s roads. In other jurisdictions, the European Union, centres in the United States, and at least one automotive company aim to achieve comparable results as early as 2020. In Canada, though, citizens must turn their thinking on its head and make road safety a national priority. Since the motor vehicle first went into mass production, the driver has taken most of the blame for its failures. In a world where each person’s safety is dependent on a system in which millions of drivers must drive perfectly over billions of hours behind the wheel, failure on a massive scale has been the result. When we neglect the central role of the motor vehicle as a dangerous consumer product, the result is one of the largest human-made means for physically assaulting human beings. It is time for Canadians to embrace internationally recognized ways of thinking and enter an era in which the motor vehicle by-product of human carnage is relegated to history. No Accident examines problems related to road safety and makes recommendations for the way forward. Topics include types of drivers; human-related driving errors related to fatigue, speed, alcohol, and distraction and roads; pedestrians, cyclists, and public transit; road engineering; motor vehicle regulation; auto safety design; and collision-avoidance technologies such as radar and camera-based sensors on vehicles that prevent crashes. This multi-disciplinary study demystifies the world of road safety and provides a road map for the next twenty years.