Goal and starting points
The goal of Sustainable Safety is to prevent (serious) crashes, and where this is not possible, to practically exclude the chances of severe injury. To achieve this, the human being is the point of departure: not only his physical vulnerability, but also his capabilities and intentions. After all, it's people who make errors and don't always obey the rules.
Sustainable Safety is an integral approach of the traffic system consisting of 'human', 'vehicle', and 'road'. Road and vehicle should be tuned to a person's capabilities, and must provide protection. Education must prepare a person for his traffic task, and finally it should be checked if he participates in traffic safely. Sustainable Safety, therefore, is not just 'infrastructure'.
Sustainable Safety aims at road safety measures that intervene as early as possible in the 'chain' from system design to, ultimately, traffic behaviour. This is necessary because it is the gaps in the traffic system that lead to unsafe behaviour, such as errors and offences, which can eventually result in crashes. By intervening in the system as early as possible, unsafe actions are made minimally dependent on the individual road user's choices.