A Swede deal

Road safety in Sweden is a serious matter.

Just how much is human life worth in our country? This question is of singular relevance "" Business Standard recently lost a photographer, a single mother of a very young child, in a tragic hit-and-run accident in Delhi.

Without meaning to appear insensitive, she became another statistic "" one of the nearly 300 people that die on our roads every single day. That's not a constant figure, mind you; the number of deaths is rising by roughly seven per cent every year. You do the math. So... just how much is human life worth here? Not very much, unfortunately.

Sweden takes a very different view, and the Swedish government invited journalists from five countries (including yours truly) to have a look at the measures they've put in place to create safer roads. We met government officials, NGOs and people from firms such as Saab and Autoliv in order to get an overview of Sweden's comprehensive road safety programme.

Foremost among these is a concept called Vision Zero, proposed by the Swedish parliament in 1997. In essence, it was based on a refusal to accept human death or serious injuries as a result of road traffic accidents. The traditional approach to road safety was to place the responsibility of safe road use upon the user, rather than on the designers of the road system.

With Vision Zero, the Swedes decided to include safe road design in the overall plan, among a number of other factors. The plan spoke of the need to reduce the risk of long-term health impairment caused by accidents and to move the emphasis away from reducing road accidents.

As its fundamental principal, it proclaimed that it cannot be ethically acceptable that people die or are seriously injured when using the transport system. After all, if it is considered unacceptable for people to die or be injured in their workplaces, why should road accidents be accepted as a part and parcel of road use?

Perhaps the most important aspect of Vision Zero is its emphasis on the biomechanical tolerance of human beings.

In other words, it states that a road system must be put in place where crash energy can't exceed human tolerance. In such a situation, the blame for fatalities in the road system is placed on the system itself, rather than the user. Think about that last sentence for a moment. What it is saying is that if something goes wrong, then it's the state's responsibility to take the blame, study the problem and come up with a solution.

Can you even imagine something like that happening in India? Here, holes large enough to swallow entire cars are dug in the middle of major roads by civic authorities, with no warning signals whatsoever, all in the name of "maintenance", the inconvenience for which is always regretted. If you happen to land your car inside it... well, too bad, these things "happen" and let's not fret over one little accident, shall we?

Exactly how did the Swedes go about implementing this vision? An 11-point programme was drawn up, covering, among other things:

An increased focus on the most dangerous roads

Making traffic safer in built up areas, reconstructing streets if needed

Making road users more aware of laws, especially with regard to drink-driving and seatbelt/helmet use

Utilising Swedish technology to the fullest extent, especially innovations such as seat-belt reminders, in-car speed adaptation systems, alcohol-ignition interlocks and electronic driver's licenses

Monitoring all the road transport system designers

The connect between mere words and action is often conspicuously absent, but Sweden appears to have had considerable success with Vision Zero. For starters, they promoted it in advertising campaigns as a "Life Saver" rather than as some sort of Big Brother measure. Most of Sweden has apparently taken this on board, with the result that seat belt and helmet use is at an all-time high and less people are breaking the law.

An aside here is appropriate in this regard "" as a people, Scandinavians seem to be much more open to change than other Europeans, especially if they see tangible benefits. Take the congestion tax introduced in Stockholm in March 2005, for example.

At first, public and media opinion was heavily against the tax, which levied a charge on vehicles entering and leaving the centre of Stockholm. The media did a 180 degree turn on the issue when they saw that the tax was helping reduce congestion and emissions, and 53 per cent of the people of Stockholm voted in favour of the tax in March 2006 "" the biggest swing of public opinion ever in the city.

Appeals courts handled only a fraction of expected appeals and 99 per cent of commuters paid the tax on time. Similarly, when the Swedish government decided to put up 700-odd speed cameras all over the country, the move went through without much public resistance. This was in stark contrast to countries like the UK and Holland, where people routinely take hacksaws and other implements to speed cameras.

The upshot of all these measures is that in 2006, the number of fatalities on Swedish roads was 431. This is the same figure as that of 1931, except Sweden now has millions more vehicles! Any way you look at it, that's a remarkable statistic. Vision Zero's eventual aim is to cut fatalities to zero by 2020, but that's an aim even government officials admit is unrealistic "" no matter how good the transport system, human beings will always make errors. Mind you, intentional or unknowing human error in Sweden can really hurt you.

The policing system is extremely strict, with random breathalyser tests common and speed limit infractions costing up to 400 euro (Rs 24,000!) in fines. It can be argued that this is the flip side of an ultra-efficient road safety system. I mean, it's important to be safe, certainly, but surely not to the extent that all the joy goes out of motoring. What's the point of a country producing a guided missile like the Koenigsegg CCX when you can't drive it without fear of simultaneous bankruptcy and imprisonment?

However, that's a motoring journalist talking "" most people would take safe roads over the occasional land speed record any day. What Sweden has achieved is therefore commendable and is to be envied. Can it be emulated, though?

Especially in our country, where a lethal cocktail of corruption, callousness and just plain ignorance make road use about as safe as Russian Roulette? Currently, the answer is clear "" no. What is also is clear is that sooner or later, India is going to have to ask itself some hard questions about its commitment to the safety of its road users.