Road safety beyond the automobility norm? Can Swedish road safety policy escape the automobility norm and facilitate cycling instead–lessons from the Netherlands

Abstract

Road safety policy rules us in both visible and invisible ways and prioritising one mode often means downgrading another. It has been argued in previous research that road safety policy prioritises car traffic and in that way sustains the automobility norm. This paper focuses on the automobility norm that permeates Swedish road safety policy and how this hampers planning for cycling. It aims to contribute to ongoing debates about the need for a radical change in road safety policy towards the inclusion of broader societal and policy goals. The theoretical foundation for this paper is found in the mobilities approach, which acknowledges that (im)mobility and safety are subject to discursive power struggles and differentiated depending on, for instance, modes, groups, age, origin, and gender. The paper aims at obtaining a broader understanding of how mobility and safety are understood in Swedish road safety policy and secondly at identifying windows of opportunity for a change towards a road safety policy that facilitates and encourages cycling. These aims are achieved by a focus on the conceptualisations of problems–instead of on solutions–and a cross-cultural comparison with Dutch road safety policy. In the concluding discussion, it is argued that road safety policy should embrace more goals besides safety, that the discourse around cycling has to be disrupted and that feelings of unsafety and fear need to be problematised.