10/11/2017

Presentation of Safe System at the Uruguayan Road Congress

Before an audience almost entirely made up of Engineers, Rodríguez explained that the "Safe Systems represent a major change in the approaches towards Road Safety. This new paradigm aiming to eliminate deaths and serious injuries resulting from traffic accidents is based on the idea that users make mistakes and that the design of the road network should be able to 'forgive' them."

The president of Fundacion Gonzalo Rodriguez listed the general principles to achieve the implementation of a safe system: "It should know that humans have limitations and make mistakes, know the physical limits of energy exchange of energy in crashes beyond which the human body is badly injured. A well-designed system can guarantee that the body´s physical limits are not exceeded in a crash and accept that there is a shared responsibility between "system designers" (those who influence the level of safety in the road network) and users ".

"The focus should be, in the long term, on the elimination of deaths and serious injuries due to traffic accidents," she said.

It is essential for Rodríguez that Road Safety agencies, authorities, engineers, designers, architects, among others, make a major change in the conception of the Road Safety principles used up to now, adopting and implementing the Safe System as an aim".