The Safe System Approach to Road Safety
A special issue of Safety (ISSN 2313-576X).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 August 2025 | Viewed by 974
Special Issue Editor
Interests: occupant protection; active and passive safety; injury biomechanics; driver behaviour; naturalistic data
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The Safe System Approach is a well-established framework for improving road safety by attempting to account for the wide range of interacting users, infrastructure, oversight and the response to crashes. This Special Issue is interested in basic research, tool development and the practical application of research relating to the pillars of the Safe System Approach. These pillars include safe road users, safe vehicles, safe speeds, safe roads and post-crash care.
Road-traffic-related injuries are the leading cause of death and serious injury for children and young adults worldwide. The complex interaction between road users, the infrastructure design, local road rules and the response to crashes creates challenges for improving safety. The Safe System Approach provides a framework that can be used to identify and ameliorate the features of a road system that increase the risk of crashes, injury and death. This framework recognizes that the safest roads are designed to accommodate human error and prioritize safe roads and roadsides, safe speeds, safe vehicles and safe road users.
This Special Issue is interested in identifying new and innovative methods to assist with applying the Safe System Approach to the road system. This includes tools and methods to identify the features of a road system that are unnecessarily risky, as well as novel countermeasures that increase the safety of roads, vehicles, users and speed limits. The goal of this Special Issue is to provide practitioners, researchers and legislators with tools and ideas that will lead to a safer road system.
Original research and review papers are welcome. Potential topics include (but are not limited to) the following:
- Basic research on road safety as it relates to the Safe System;
- Countermeasures that reduce risk;
- Innovative methods for identifying high-risk areas;
- Modeling tools for the evaluation of road safety risk;
- Effects of laws, standards and recommended practices on road safety outcomes;
- Statistical analysis of injury risk;
- Cost–benefit analyses;
- The results of case studies and pilot studies;
- The use of real-world data to support decision making.
Dr. Garrett Mattos
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Safety is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- decade of action
- injury risk
- vulnerable road users
- vision zero
- safe system approach
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