Today traffic safety is a major health issue. The numbers of killed and injured in traffic accidents globally every year are staggering. The World Health Organization WHO has estimated the number of fatalities to approximately 1.2 million and the numbers will increase by 65% over the next 20 years. (Peden et al.).
Realizing that this is unacceptable, a number of countries and organizations, among them Sweden and Volvo Car Corporation, have adopted visions aiming towards the goal of no serious injuries and fatalities in traffic (Johansson R, 2009).
The European Commission, in its communication on road safety 2011-2020 to the European Parliament, (SEC (2010) 903) did clearly state the goal of a drastic reduction of the number of fatalities and serious injuries in traffic in line with the visions of reaching zero.
Traffic safety has taken major steps during the last four decades and the risk of being killed or seriously injured as an occupant in a passenger car has been cut down to one third from the early 1970s, (Beckmann, 2009). This has been done basically through separate efforts by each stakeholder in the safety community operating independently (focusing users, roads and vehicles).
Improving road traffic safety towards the target of zero deaths and serious injuries will pose many challenges and obstacles to governments, road authorities and car manufacturers globally. Modern active and integrated safety systems carry a hope of substantially contribute to better safety. However no individual part in society can achieve the demanding goals on its own. Systematic cooperation will be essential to progress. These cooperations need initially to establish shared views on strategies forward, agreements on division of responsibilities, and a shared view on the interfaces between the cars and the infrastructure. A joint view on the demands put on the drivers is also essential. Stringent targets can only be met in an efficient way by a holistic view on road design, vehicle design and user capabilities.
In 2008 the Swedish Transport Administration and Volvo Car Corporation signed an agreement on cooperation. This co-operation rests on the two separate visions of the parties involved, i.e. Vision Zero, for the Swedish government and Vision 2020 for Volvo Cars. An important part of the cooperations is the establishment of quality and demands on the interfaces between the vehicle and the road for instance , road design, road lane markings, road friction measuring, division of responsibility, speed limits etc.