Protection of Pedestrians as the Key Action for Implementing Poland’s Vision Zero

The World Health Organization (WHO) reports show that pedestrians account for 10 to 70% of total road crash fatalities. In Poland, pedestrians also represent a significant road safety problem. For many years, pedestrian collisions have accounted for approx. 30% of total road crashes with more than 30% of pedestrians killed. Therefore, pedestrian safety has been one of Poland’s main objectives in its road safety programs implemented over the past 20 years. The paper describes the implementation of Poland’s national road safety program GAMBIT 2005, which adopted the far-reaching Vision Zero. Despite the lack of a dedicated pedestrian safety program, pedestrians are key to the implementation of Vision Zero. Therefore, one of the program’s main objectives was the safety of pedestrians, cyclists and children. Because pedestrian fatalities have not decreased, the implementation of Vision Zero requires a more focused approach to pedestrian safety. To manage pedestrian safety, a risk-based approach is used. The paper describes pedestrian safety management based on methods for estimating measures of strategic societal risk, tactical risk classification, and assessing the effectiveness of operational level actions. The paper also describes the effectiveness of pedestrian safety studies and their evaluation.