nevertheless based on blame the victim attitudes where considerable focus and attention was given to improving the behaviour of the human being road safety policies lacked the holistic approach needed to achieve further significant injury reduction a safe system does not view road deaths and injuries as the inevitable price to pay for a highlymotorised society by seeing any road death as an unacceptable system failure it counters the risk that transport planners may adopt measures of transport efficiency that tolerate fatalities that are affordably preventable