Goals of the 2030 road safety program

ASFINAG's systemic safety approach ("Safe System") pursues the same long-term idea as the Swedish "Vision Zero" philosophy: a traffic system without accidents resulting in fatalities or serious injuries is entirely feasible and desirable! Since accidents can never be completely prevented, we want to strive to at least permanently reduce the severity of accidents.

The success of our safety work should also be measurable. We have therefore set ourselves reduction targets for fatalities, serious injuries and accidents in the years up to 2030. In addition, we want to achieve a whole series of specific key figures, each of which represents safety-relevant sub-areas of ASFINAG's activities.

Influence of the "Safe System" on the focus of our goals

In traditional safety work, the main aim was to minimize the number of accidents as far as possible. However, this ultimately proves to be a futile endeavor, especially in times of constantly increasing traffic density - and because everyone makes unintentional mistakes from time to time. With Safe System, we are therefore making a paradigm shift from accident prevention to injury prevention: traffic fatalities and serious injuries are unacceptable, but accidents themselves can never be completely avoided; some typical Safe System measures (e.g. structural median separations) may even increase the number of accidents - especially property damage - but they reduce the severity of accidents in the long term.

In addition to the long-term vision of zero fatalities and serious injuries on our road network, we have set ourselves a series of three-level targets for 2030:

The number of fatalities per billion kilometers driven should fall sustainably to less than 1 by 2030 - that would put us at the top of Europe. This number of fatalities per kilometer is the most meaningful international comparison figure for the safety of road networks.

* per billion kilometers driven
Time periodDevelopment of the fatality rate *
2006 - 20083,4
2011 - 20132,0
2016 - 20181,4
2017 - 20191,3
2018 - 20201,1
2019 - 20211,2
2020 - 20221,2

 

FatalityLess than 1 fatality per billion kilometers driven (fatality rate) from 2030
Seriously injuredfewer than 10 accidents with fatalities or serious injuries per billion kilometers driven from 2020
Accidentsfewer than 70 accidents with personal injury per billion kilometers driven (accident rate) from 2020

A total of 15 sub-goals and key figures reflect the quality of safety work in the numerous specialist areas of ASFINAG and its cooperation partners. These were assigned to the system components infrastructure - vehicle - traffic behavior and grouped according to the mechanism of action: Accident prevention or accident severity reduction.

Infrastructure - accident prevention

  • the number of accident blackspots should be less than 30 per year
  • the vast majority (at least 85%) of drivers should always choose speeds below the speed limit (v85 ≤ vpermissible)
  • Tunnel accidents with a large number of people involved should be avoided altogether
    In the case of planned traffic stops due to construction and maintenance work, it must be ensured that this never causes serious accidents
  • In terms of skid resistance and evenness, the so-called utility value should be better than 5 on at least 97% of the routes

 

Infrastructure - reducing the severity of accidents

  • The number of fatalities in collisions with trees next to the carriageway should be reduced to zero through appropriate measures ("side space management")
  • Suitable measures should be taken to completely prevent head-on collisions on the entire network of freeways and expressways

 

Vehicle accident prevention

  • The equipment level with ABS (anti-lock braking system) should exceed 95% and that with electronic stability control (ESC) 90%
  • Accidents caused by drunk drivers are unacceptable
  • Truck accidents due to technical defects are to be avoided as far as possible through quality assurance measures

 

Vehicle - reducing the severity of accidents

  • The degree of equipment with functioning airbags should exceed 90%

 

Traffic behavior - accident prevention

  • The number of alcohol-related accidents should fall below 80
  • In view of a recent increase in the number of serious rear-end collisions, fully automatic distance controls are to be established

 

Traffic behavior - reducing the severity of accidents

  • The seat belt usage rate of car drivers is to rise to over 99%
  • The seat belt use rate for truck drivers should reach 100%