Balancing Speed and Safety

If you drive around Sweden you’ll see variations of the same road markings, road signs, and traffic signals that are used everywhere else in the developed world. But Sweden is a remarkably safer place for road users than the rest of the world. In fact, in 2013 it was among the safest countries in road traffic deaths per 100,000 people.

So, how did the Swedes do it? Are they better drivers? Are the traffic laws in Sweden stricter than other countries? Are their roads just better designed? It turns out that the recipe for traffic safety is a combination of all of these things, delivered by an innovative program called Vision Zero.

Vision Zero has a laudable goal—reducing all road accident–related deaths to zero. It aims to achieve this by designing road systems that prioritize safety above all other factors, while still recognizing the importance of keeping traffic moving. In other words, a road system that is designed first and foremost with safety in mind.

At its core, Vision Zero is about culture change. Policymakers, traffic system designers, and citizens have a shared belief that the safety of pedestrians and drivers is more valuable than the need to move from place to place as quickly as possible. This culture of safety drives individual behavior, which can result in a more desirable outcome for the traffic system.

In addition, the road system itself is designed to be safer. Traffic designers apply speed limits, road signs, and traffic movement patterns in a way that benefits the overall safety of the system. For example, while it is necessary to ensure the movement of cars on the road, speed is limited to a level that the human body could withstand in a collision given the technical standards of the vehicles and roads that exist. While speed limits may impact drivers’ ability to get to their destination as quickly as possible, the design decision is always driven by the requirement to protect human life. Where most road systems are designed to facilitate movement (or speed) in a safe way, Vision Zero systems incorporate movement into a system primarily designed for safety.

The road designers are continuously making trade-offs that favor the safety of its users. Instead of solely relying on skilled drivers who know how to avoid common mistakes, Vision Zero designers create roads that account for the errors and miscalculations that many human drivers inevitably make. While it is the driver’s responsibility to adhere to the rules of the road, the system designers must do their best to protect humans even in situations where drivers do not conform.

All in all, the Vision Zero approach seems to work. While they haven’t reduced fatalities to zero yet, the program has been so successful in improving safety within Sweden that other cities like New York and Seattle are adopting it and hoping to see similar results in their own traffic systems. In the end, this success was made possible by combining improvements to policy, technology, and infrastructure in a holistic manner. Vision Zero adopts a systematic approach to design in a safety-first manner.

Just like traffic systems, software systems become more complex as their scale—in the form of scope, volume, and user interactions—increases. And like road designers, software architects and engineers must maintain a balance of speed and safety in their software systems. Software development organizations have used microservice architecture to achieve faster delivery and greater safety as the scale of their systems increase. The holistic, consciously designed approach of Vision Zero suggests an approach to microservice architecture that organizations can take to achieve the balance of speed and safety that meets their goals.