What is the Safe System Approach?
Implementing the Safe System approach is our shared responsibility. We all have a role.
It requires shifting how Denver thinks about transportation safety, how we prioritize our transportation investments and how drivers drive. People are going to make mistakes. And human bodies have a limited ability to tolerate crash impacts.
In a Safe System, those mistakes should never lead to death. Applying the Safe System approach refocuses transportation system design and operation on anticipating human mistakes and lessening impact forces to reduce crash severity and save lives.
- Safety is proactive
- Responsibility is shared
- Redundancy is crucial
- Humans are vulnerable
- Humans make mistakes
- Death and serious injury are unacceptable
Safe System Elements
Vision Zero means zero traffic fatalities or serious bodily injuries. The Safe System Approach is our process for achieving Vision Zero, helping people in Denver make better transportation safety decisions.
Safe Streets
Designing streets, bike lanes, crosswalks and more to accommodate the mistakes people make and injury tolerances can greatly reduce the severity of crashes that do occur. Examples include physically separating people traveling at different speeds, providing dedicated times for different users to move through a space and alerting users to hazards and other road users.
Mitigation Measures
Safe Speeds
There is a direct link between lower speeds and a person’s ability to survive a crash. Reducing speeds can accommodate human injury tolerances in three ways: reducing impact forces, providing additional time for drivers to stop and improving visibility.
The new speed limit on Denver’s local streets is 20mph.
Denver's Local Speed Limit
Safe Road Users
All road users have an equal right to safety, regardless of how they choose to travel. Each road user has a responsibility to operate, to the best of their ability, in a safe manner. In addition to safe street designs and appropriate speed limits education and enforcement can help to modulate user behavior.
DOTI's Office of Community & Business Engagement
Safe Vehicles
Vehicles are designed and regulated to minimize the occurrence and severity of collisions using safety measures that incorporate the latest technology. Expand the availability of vehicle systems and features that help to prevent crashes and minimize the impact of crashes on both occupants and non-occupants.
Post-Crash Care
When a person is injured in a collision, they rely on emergency first responders to quickly locate them, stabilize their injury and transport them to medical facilities. Post-crash care also includes forensic analysis at the crash site, traffic incident management and other activities.
Denver’s Vision Zero includes a Rapid-Response program that identifies solutions when a traffic-related death occurs. The Rapid-Response program creates templates of quick-build solutions that are easy-to-install infrastructure changes at locations with safety concerns. This will result in the recommendations being proactive, rather than reactive, to crashes.
Conclusion
Implementing the Safe System approach is our shared responsibility; we all have a role. It requires shifting how Denver thinks about transportation safety and how we prioritize our transportation investments. Safe systems include redundancies which work to prevent fatal or serious bodily injury crashes. Reducing risks requires that all parts of the transportation system be strengthened so that if one part fails, the other parts still protect people.
DOTI and the Vision Zero team are committed to applying a Safe System lens to all upcoming projects and plans in our City, putting safety at the forefront and designing to accommodate human mistakes and injury tolerances.