Our Traffic Safety Vision is;

TURKEY, where no loss of life and serious injuries happen due to traffic accidents.

This vision is the implementation of the Vision Zero approach, which is followed up by countries placed near the top in terms of traffic safety on earth, and brought successful outcomes, to the traffic system in Turkey.

The follow-up vision zero approach in traffic safety denotes that everyone using the road will be protected against traffic accidents as a result of the joint approach followed up by all stakeholders constituting the road transportation system.

The vision of Traffic Safety Strategy is a TURKEY, where no loss of life and serious injuries happen due to traffic accidents.

The implementation of the vision indicates that all stakeholders see eye to eye in these fields:

• It is unacceptable that a loss of life occurred in the transport system.
• It is possible to prevent the potential loss of life and serious injuries to happen in roads with measures to take.
• We all can make mistakes as humans, but the cost of our mistake shouldn’t be death.

What does this vision mean?

It means that it is not possible to acknowledge the loss of lives occurring in roads as a natural consequence or cost of using the road transportation system. Although it is not possible to plan and implement the road transport system in a way to prevent all accidents, it is possible to establish it in a way to keep people alive when a traffic accident happened, and the benchmark is to keep people alive despite traffic accidents.

When planning travel by plane, knowing that necessary measures at the airport, aboard, in the ground services, and even in the luggage services, assures the airway users. The regulations on the workplace health and safety are also implemented in a way to assure that the staff will return their homes safe and sound at the end of their shifts in workplaces. Likewise, it is expected that the safety of life and property of people using the road in different manners is ensured and the sole purpose of the road transportation system to become protecting the safety of life and property of people rather than blaming people who got injured, for they made a mistake, in the road transport system, which was also constructed by people.

It is not possible to accept the loss of life of people due to road traffic as a normal situation. This statement forms the basis of this vision.

The objective to decrease the loss of life due to traffic accidents by 50% by 2020 when compared to 2011, which was determined with the Road Traffic Safety Strategy Paper and Action Plan of 31 July 2012, was updated in line with the decree set forth by the United Nations in the Stockholm Declaration during the 3rd Global Road Safety High-Level Conference, and reducing the loss of lives in roads by at least 50% as of 2030 when compared to 2020 was ascertained to be the new traffic safety objective.

The decennial objective of the traffic safety vision in Turkey is to DECREASE THE LOSS OF LIVES happening as a result of traffic accidents BY 50% by 2030,

and the ultimate objective is to PRESENT A TRAFFIC SYSTEM, WHERE NO LOSS OF LIFE HAPPENS TO THE TURKISH NATION BY 2050.

The intermediate objective on achieving the ultimate objective, namely preventing all deaths and serious injuries in the roads of Turkey by 2050, is to reduce the loss of lives and serious injuries in traffic accidents by 50% by 2030.

We are conscious of the fact that the road system has gaps in terms of ensuring the safety of life of all road users, and that it doesn’t protect other vulnerable road users sufficiently at present.

Besides, we also know that there are vehicles that aren’t that safe, the number of vehicles carrying freight and passengers and motorcycles increase day by day, and that it isn’t possible to ensure that all vehicles with such high numbers reach the sufficient level of safety in a short time.

We are aware that human behaviours don’t prioritize safety all the time, and that changing such behavioural patterns will take time. However, the method to realize this vision is to set the goals to reduce the loss of lives resulting from traffic accidents at realist and concrete levels and conduct coordinated works for these goals. We will support these goals with assessment and evaluation methods and monitor our progress.

Along with being aware that it is an assertive objective to reduce the loss of lives and serious injuries due to traffic accidents by 50% by 2030 when compared with the numbers in 2020, we believe that this objective can be achieved with concrete strategic steps supporting traffic safety progresses in ten years.

We will be diligent to ensure that proper interventions in line with the strategy paper are adopted and activity outputs are in conformity to reach this objective.

Thanks to the efforts to be made to ensure that the objective to reduce accidents involving death by 50% by 2030 when compared with the numbers in 2020, we will have prevented the loss of lives of many citizens in traffic accidents happening in roads by 2030. As a natural consequence of this, we will have achieved an even decrease in the number of injured people and financial losses. Again, when evaluated with today’s numbers, we will have ensured preventing the serious level of financial loss in case we achieve the 2030 objective.

According to the results obtained from some scientific studies, in case infrastructure improvements (middle divider barriers and intersection improvements) are made, the speed limit is lowered in risky areas of the road network, and the combined increase is ensured in the traffic police controls and electronic control methods, it is considered possible to decrease deaths resulting from traffic accidents by 50%. Again, according to the same studies, increasing the level of safety of motor vehicles may contribute to the decrease in deaths resulting from traffic accidents by 25%.

Reducing the remaining 25% depends on the adoption of interventions such as fundamental changes in driving courses, and increasing the sanctions corresponding to violations altogether. Achieving the objective of decreasing the loss of lives and serious injuries due to traffic accidents by 50% in roads, set forth with this strategy paper, depends on substantial changes such as the transition to safer and sustainable transport modals, changing our behaviours of using the roads, and the development of vehicle safety technologies.