Good practices

Riksförbundet M Sverige has been working to make Swedish roads safer for 100 years. M Sverige, as a member club, holds an important place as an active partner with government institutions and the road using public in the effort to reduce road crashed and reach Mission Zero (Nollvisionen). M Sverige has always focused on and worked with our partners to make roads and cars safer and while also focused on making road users safer, this solution that we have launched goes beyond communication and education and delivers real world, targeted and personal solutions to the Swedish public.

Our main focus with this project is to develop safer road users.

We had many road traffic accidents due to speeding.

The Global Plan for the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021-2030 (Global Plan), has the priorities to redefine multimodal transport and land plan use, to ensure safety and to equitable access to mobility while responding to the diverse needs and preferences of a population. Cycling and the use of cargo bikes are key players in the mobility landscape and the Safer Cycling Advocate Program (SCAP) promotes cycling and cargo bike use as a safe alternative and modal shift. Cargo bikes are being considered a rising star in urban light mobility since they are capable of solving family (shopping or children) or work (from deliveries to transporting a craftsman's tools) tasks while reducing the impact on the environment. For this reason, the European Union has also launched a programme for the dissemination of cargo bikes (called City changer cargo bike), based on the considerable development potential of this means of transport: up to 25% of all deliveries are made by cargo bikes, up to 25% of deliveries in cities, up to 50% of maintenance services, up to 77% of private journeys.

The Alliance first launched the Safer Cycling Advocate Program (SCAP) in 2019 in collaboration with the European Cycling Federation (ECF) and funding from FedEx. The SCAP promotes safer cycling practices by equipping advocates, organizations, and transport planners to implement steps towards safer and more sustainable active mobility.

The SCAP Guide – a resource compiling the best practices and experiences of Copenhagen (Denmark) and Amsterdam (Netherlands) – two cities with established cycling cultures. Early years of the program focused on the Baltic region, helping to bolster cycling uptake by giving community organizations an evidence base to improve safety for cyclists in Croatia, Slovenia, and Bosnia.

Year three has seen the project evolve and expand – supporting cities to get citizens onto bikes as a mode of sustainable transport. A small fleet of cargo bikes is being introduced to SCAP participating cities for shared public use in Bogota (Colombia), Bologna (Italy), Mexico City (Mexico), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Torun (Poland), and Valencia (Spain). Usage data from these bikes will inform cities’ plans as they encourage people to transition from private vehicles to zero-emissions bicycles as a practical solution that does not compromise the ability to carry small goods.

In driving licence training, learning road safety content via printed books is standard - the fun of learning often comes up short and the learning success are sometimes not fully given. Young people in particular learn better when they are taught in a modern and digital way. The KFV has developed the learning platform "Yarrive" in order to convey the safety content for mobility for cars, mopeds, cycling and other topics in a modern way. We expect this modern teaching approach to improve the competence of the learners. The goal is to move from memorising content to understanding it - this contributes significantly to the improvement of road safety.
Yarrive, the digital learning platform based on gamification approaches and the spaced-repetition learning method, imparts knowledge interactively and playfully. Yarrive supports the training of learner drivers to become responsible road users and thus contributes significantly to safe coexistence in daily road traffic.
By transforming rigid frontal teaching into a social studying experience, Yarrive motivates young participants in particular to learn together with their peers. As Yarrive was developed in close cooperation with driving schools, learning units and exam modules are precisely tailored to the training plan. The platform wants to contribute to sensitising young driving licence holders to the dangers of everyday road traffic.

In 2008, several fatal accidents involving teenagers on bicycles occurred in our region. Parents' associations of secundary schools sat down around the table to think about a solution together. Studies showed that young people are very often involved in bicycle accidents. The cause is often “not being seen” in the dark. Most primary school children are required to wear a fluorescent jacket in our region. Young people in secondary school don't like wearing fluorescent jackets. They are laughed at by their schoolmates. Imposing an obligation is not possible. XIU looked for other solutions to tackle this problem in a way that would make it easier for them to do so.