Systematic Safety: The Principles Behind Vision Zero. [522]

As a Dutch person I take these things for granted and see them as normal. I did not know it was that bad in the rest of the world.

"...we are human, and a system that is safe only if people don't make mistakes, is not a system that is made for humans." Thank you for that clarity!

'And a system that is safe only if people don't make mistakes, is not a system that is made for humans.' Insightful quote :)

Very well done! Thanks for gearing this for the US. We need to keep pushing our city and state governments to adopt these practices. I will pass the word!

5:03  That Toyota driver needs an extra lesson on parking.

Last year, no children died in traffic in Norway.

It's soo nice to see this explained like this where as a dutchman you don't think one second about it while taking part in traffic :P You suddenly appreciate what we have so much more

I wish we could have that approach in Poland. In Poland, the streets have been designed to accommodate as much car traffic as possible. The powers-that-be always want to cut down the expenses of the public transportation and they encourage people to use their private cars as the main transportation means in towns and cities. Recently, new streets have been built with some bike paths but the paths are narrow and not especially good for travelling on bikes. They seem to have been built with the main aim od shoving byciclist off the main traffic lane and because there's a refund from the UE for a new road if you build a bike path. The traffic lanes in Poland are very wide and 70 kph (40mph) is not an usual speeds od cars on one lane per direction streets. This is even on local streets which should be subject to the 30kph (20mph) policy. A local street in the neighboring residential area was renovated in 2015 and lights were mounted at a pedestrian crossing near a school because it was so dangerous to cross the street there. Despite a 40kph (25mph) speed limit, most drivers drive at least 60kph - the traffic lane is very wide and "encourages" them to drive fast. There's also the mentality. Polish drivers have been used to drive fast in the streets with very little chance get punished for that. Now, if you want to impose a 30kph speed limit on local street, they say "I will now travel faster being stationary". Bycicle has become much more popular recently (last 8-10 years) wth the popularity still rising but it is still not popular overall and bicycle is considered mainly as a hindrance for car traffic. And it is quite dangerous because drivers don't heed the bicycle traffic enough. Here comes the mentality again. Most drivers think bikers have to be much more carefull because they are going to get hurt in an accident and not the drivers. The most advised-for safety measure is wearing a crash-helmet (some Polish bikers think a crash-helmet is much more important than being carefull when biking). I have watched many films about bycicling in the Netherlands and no one wears a crash-helmet riding a bycicle and - in spite of that - it is one of the safest countries for bikers.

In counries like Slovakia is traffic safety "solved" by high fines...ofcourse it doesn't work. This Dutch style should be implemented in every country in the world

This will be a very hard sell in the U.S. as we have developed the attitude that cars have the God-given right to go anywhere, and as fast as we want to and everyone and everything else has no right to get in our way or impede our progress, especially pedestrians and bicycles. We have built our whole infrastructure for the benefit of automobile traffic, not for people.

I just cannot thank you enough for this video on your channel. I was so much delved into it that for a moment, I felt like I am right there and kept on smiling while watching it. I hope you could understand, I am living in India and it is well known across the world how poor or worst it is in terms of infrastructure. People in Netherlands are blessed literally.

This is really what I would love to see here in the states. Problem is some bike groups are against this kind of infra. Our local "advocacy group" Omaha bikes has made it quite clear they don't support dedicated infra, and would rather people bike on the street as cars. A neighbor city has installed a quite good separated bidirectional path, that while not quite up to dutch standards, is close. Yet several key members of the group made a point in a recent blog post how they felt it was unsafe and that people should just ride in the street. While their site officially says they support dedicated infra, their words tell another story. If we can't even get the people who are suppose to be fighting for better infra to do so, what chance do we really have. It's enough to make me want to start a new group that will actually fight for change, without fear of upsetting a few drivers.

I love how he said "Sweden and the Netherlands" when there are actually only Dutch examples :D

Great explanation, theese basic concepts should be adopted everywhere.

This is a great, simple yet profound introduction to the concept of sustainable safety. Great job. I'll be showing this to a lot of people.

"If any other industry had a death toll like that it'd be shut down immediately" cough*tobacco*cough

here in NYC, vision zero merely decreased the speed limit from 30 to 25 mph in local streets. it's missing so many of these key principles

This is the best explanation of how things are done in the Netherlands. And I think its an example of how you can do it in the UK or US or where ever you want. We have made a science of it and look at the numbers it works.

What you did not mention is that in the Netherlands, pedestrians or cyclists are "weaker" road users, meaning that if they have a collision with a "stronger" road user (car, bus, motor, etc) the stronger vehicle is by default to blame, unless the weaker party did something really stupid. This makes cars more aware of cyclists and pedestrians and more safe for them.

5:03 Someone turned the wheels a bit too sharp. Yikes!