How well does your organisation understand and implement the Safe System approach?
Feature article by the Inclusive Mobility Program Safety Task Group
May 2024
Have you heard a colleague mention that ‘the Safe System is expensive and unnecessary’?
Or do you find yourself thinking ‘zero fatalities and serious injuries is an impossible target’?
Following from the AITPM’s webinar on the Safe System Approach to traffic management during National Road Safety Week, we ask you to consider how mature you or your organisation’s culture is in relation to Safe System thinking and application.
Recent research1 from Victoria involving a survey of 469 road safety practitioners indicated that 25.8% of practitioners had not heard of the Safe System. The lack of universal adoption and implementation of the Safe System approach in Australia is concerning despite it being introduced two decades ago.
For those who are aware of the Safe System, its effective implementation and level of adoption can vary. If we are serious about meeting our national target to achieve zero fatalities and serious injuries (FSI) on our roads by 2050, a significant departure from our business-as-usual practices is required. The Safe System represents one of our best current approaches and has the potential to eliminate the majority of FSI crashes that currently occur on our roads.
To help measure Safe System culture the team at Agilysis have developed the ‘Safe System Cultural Maturity Model’ (SSCMM) to assess Safe System readiness within road safety organisations2.
The SSCMM is based on thorough analysis of a variety of international Safe System and Cultural Maturity models, and draws upon the following five levels of adaptation:
- Vulnerable e.g. organisations that deliver minimal road safety interventions as crashes are believed to be mainly caused by poor driving
- Emerging e.g. organisations that take road safety more seriously but focus on reactive measures
- Developing e.g. organisations that are aware of the Safe System concept but not adopting it in working practices
- Maturing e.g. organisations where Safe System thinking is becoming embedded with more proactive action and collaboration with other organisations across the system
- Advanced e.g. organisations adopting the Safe System universally with active participation at all levels, working closely with partners and stakeholders
The below table provides examples of what organisations say, do and think depending on their level of Safe System maturity. The final column then tells us what we need to do to improve an organisation’s cultural maturity.
What is your organisation’s level of maturity?
1 Green, M., Muir, C., Oxley, J., & Sobhani, A. (2024). Safe System in Practice: A Study of Practitioner Awareness, Support and Implementation. Journal of Road Safety, 35(2). https://doi.org/10.33492/JRS-D-24-2-2286649
2 Fosdick, T., Campsall, D., Kamran, M., & Scott, S. (2024). Creating a Cultural Maturity Model to Assess Safe System Readiness Within Road Safety Organisations. Journal of Road Safety, 35(1), 52-64. https://doi.org/10.33492/JRS-D-24-1-2125507