The importance attached to walking varies widely throughout modern-day society. In public health terms, walking offers one of the best opportunities to promote good health and personal independence for people from a very wide range of ages and physical abilities. In urban transport terms, walking is an essential component of most public transport trips and also a necessary, albeit minor, part of trips by private car. Walking is inexpensive, highly accessible and imposes no negative impacts on a global environment already labouring under an extreme load from power generation, industry and motorised transport. Pedestrians are the most vulnerable users of the road-transport system, being entirely unprotected in traffic, where vehicles commonly travel at speeds that have a high probability of causing death in a collision with a pedestrian. It is therefore surprising that walking still requires vigorous promotion and advocacy for its needs and many attributes recognised and actually supported through various policies and standards. This paper discusses the emergence of new safety philosophies, such as Sweden’s Vision Zero, The Netherlands’ Sustainable Safety, and more recently Australia’s Safe System, which define a radically new way of thinking about how road-transport systems should “look and operate” in order to prevent, in a sustainable way, the loss of life and long-term health that currently characterises the road-transport system. Australia’s National Road Safety Action Plan has recently embraced this philosophy, providing further impetus for a major shift from traditional ways of designing and operating the road transport system. At present, there is a critical gap in knowledge of how to translate the Safe System philosophies into principles for real-world practice that lead ultimately to “safe walking”. The paper presents an overview of the current state-of knowledge on opportunities to promote safe walking. It describes the extent, nature and trends in pedestrian trauma in Victoria and defines key targets for addressing pedestrian trauma, while catering for increased walking. A particular focus of the paper is on high-pedestrian activity areas and, in particular, road infrastructure and traffic design options for creating pedestrian-friendly, low-risk settings. (Author/publisher)
Abstract