Our Approach

The Safe System Approach

Traffic deaths and serious injuries are preventable. Families for Safe Streets supports the Safe System Approach, a framework for creating a transportation system in which safety is the highest priority.

The Safe System Approach recognizes a simple reality: people make mistakes, but those mistakes should not cost someone their life. Instead of relying solely on individuals to prevent crashes, a safe transportation system is designed with multiple layers of protection. If one layer fails, others are there to reduce the likelihood that someone will be killed or seriously injured.

The approach includes five interconnected elements:

1. Safer Roads — Designing streets and intersections to reduce the likelihood and severity of crashes and to protect people of all ages and abilities.

2. Safer Speeds — Managing vehicle speeds so they are appropriate for the surrounding environment and reduce the risk of death or serious injury when crashes occur.

3. Safer Vehicles — Using vehicle design and technology to help prevent crashes and protect both people inside and outside vehicles.

4. Safer People — Creating conditions that encourage safer behavior by everyone who uses the transportation system.

5. Post-Crash Care — Improving emergency response and medical care after crashes while protecting first responders and reducing the risk of additional crashes.

Together, these elements create a transportation system that anticipates human mistakes and provides multiple opportunities to prevent those mistakes from becoming tragedies.

The Safe Systems Pyramid

The Safe System Approach tells us that preventing traffic deaths requires multiple layers of protection. The Safe Systems Pyramid provides another useful way to think about which safety strategies can have the greatest impact.

Adapted from principles used in public health and injury prevention, the pyramid emphasizes solutions that protect people across an entire population and do not depend primarily on each individual making the right decision every time.

At the base of the pyramid are broad, systemic interventions such as policies and changes to the built environment. Above them are passive or automatic safety measures, followed by measures that require increasing levels of individual action. Education sits at the top.

The lesson is not that any one level can prevent traffic violence on its own. Effective safety strategies use multiple layers of protection. But when choosing where to focus limited resources, the pyramid encourages us to prioritize solutions that protect the greatest number of people while requiring the least individual effort.

For Families for Safe Streets, this is an important principle: we should design a transportation system that makes safe outcomes more likely, even when people make mistakes.

Learn More

For a deeper look at the way we think about crashes, responsibility, and prevention, watch this presentation by Jessie Singer, author of There Are No Accidents.