Before Vision Zero: How a Canadian Magazine Article from 1937 Anticipated Modern Road Safety Thinking – The Canadian Association of Road Safety Professionals (CARSP)

By: Essam Dabbour, Ph.D., RSP1, F.ITE, P.Eng.

Abstract

Road safety professionals often view systemic safety management, evidence-based intervention, and the Safe System approach as relatively modern concepts. Vision Zero, for example, is widely associated with Sweden’s formal adoption of the policy in 1997. However, an almost forgotten article from 1937 in the Canadian Home Journal suggests that some of the intellectual foundations of these approaches were being discussed in Canada nearly six decades earlier. This article reflects on a historical publication authored by Canadian physician and public health pioneer, Dr. Norman L. Burnette, who argued that traffic collisions should be treated not as isolated failures of individual drivers, but as a preventable public-health problem requiring scientific investigation, multidisciplinary collaboration, and evidence-based intervention. While the terminology did not yet exist, many of the principles described in the article align closely with our modern approach to road safety.

Introduction

While returning from a site examination in rural Ontario, I noticed a yard sale displaying a large collection of vintage magazines and newspapers for passersby. Given my passion for history, curiosity prompted me to stop and browse through this treasure trove. Among the collection, I found a May 1937 issue of Canadian Home Journal. While skimming through its pages, one article immediately captured my attention: “What Is Wrong with Our Safety Traffic Work?” [1].

The article was authored by Dr. Norman L. Burnette, a Canadian physician and pioneer in public health, occupational therapy, and mental hygiene. Dr. Burnette’s professional background alone is noteworthy, since modern Vision Zero and Safe System approaches emphasize that road safety is not merely a transportation engineering issue, but an interdisciplinary challenge requiring collaboration among practitioners from various fields. Almost a century ago, a Canadian physician was already approaching road safety through precisely that broader interdisciplinary lens. While Dr. Burnette's ideas predated modern Vision Zero and Safe System frameworks by many decades, the conceptual parallels are striking.

Road Safety as a Public-Health Issue

In 1937, Canada’s transportation environment was vastly different from today. Vehicle ownership was lower, roadway networks were less developed, traffic control systems were less sophisticated, and traffic engineering had not yet fully emerged as a mature professional discipline. Despite this context, Dr. Burnette presented ideas that remain relevant today. He wrote that society had already accepted scientific approaches for preventing infectious diseases but had failed to apply the same objectivity or methodology to traffic collisions. He observed that medical science was not limited to merely treating people but instead sought to understand causes and prevention. That statement is striking because it mirrors the philosophy underlying the modern Safe System approach.

Today, the Safe System approach to road safety recognizes that human error is inevitable. The objective is therefore not merely to urge individuals to perform better, but to design transportation systems that anticipate human mistakes and pre-emptively prevent those mistakes from resulting in death or serious injury.

Dr. Burnette made a similar argument when he criticized simplistic blame directed solely at drivers and called instead for scientific examination of “the various factors” contributing to collisions. This reflects a system-oriented perspective that closely aligns with our modern road safety thinking.

An Interesting Comparison with Common Diseases

One of the most compelling sections of the 1937 article was Dr. Burnette’s comparison between traffic deaths and fatalities from infectious diseases that were common at the time, including measles, pertussis (then commonly called whooping cough), typhoid, and scarlet fever. His message was that traffic trauma should be treated as a preventable public health crisis, similar to those diseases that were common at the time. That framing was remarkably progressive. By comparing traffic trauma with infectious disease mortality, Dr. Burnette was effectively arguing that society should stop accepting traffic deaths as unavoidable “accidents” [2] and instead confront them as preventable harms requiring organized intervention. That perspective aligns strongly with Vision Zero’s central ethical principle that no death or serious injury in the transportation system is acceptable.

Nearly 90 years after the publication of Dr. Burnette’s 1937 article, public health has dramatically reduced the burden of many infectious diseases through research, surveillance, prevention, and evidence-based policy. Dr. Burnette believed road trauma deserved the same systematic approach—a philosophy that remains highly relevant today.

Scientific Investigation Instead of Assumptions

As a traffic safety expert and forensic engineer who investigates traffic collisions, I routinely examine collision history at a subject location as one source of evidence when evaluating its safety performance. I consider this evidence alongside other engineering factors, including roadway design, traffic control devices, human factors, and environmental conditions. Therefore, I was particularly fascinated with the section of Dr. Burnette’s article where he argued that safety decisions should be grounded in scientific investigation rather than on speculation. In Dr. Burnette’s words, “our first task is to build up the epidemiology of accidents.” He further emphasized that “we cannot correct the faults of the individual if we do not know the people under the conditions.” Nearly ninety years later, that philosophy remains fundamental to modern traffic safety research and forensic collision investigation.

Dr. Burnette also observed that society possessed “insufficient knowledge of the variation of behavior which contributes to accident causes.” Rather than treating collisions as isolated driver failures, he argued that understanding normal human behaviour should become a scientific discipline. This philosophy closely resembles the Safe System’s recognition that human error and behavioural variability are inevitable characteristics of road users, and that transportation systems should be designed to anticipate and accommodate them.

Today, collision analysis relies on sophisticated tools, such as systemic network screening, collision database analysis, predictive modelling, human factors research, and digital evidence such as Event Data Recorder (EDR) downloads and dashcam footage. These modern tools often reveal that early assumptions about the causes of a collision can be incomplete or entirely incorrect. Physical evidence or digital vehicle data may ultimately prove that a collision that initially appeared to result from deficient roadway design or inadequate signage, for example, was actually caused by unsafe driving behaviour or failure to follow traffic rules. Conversely, roadway deficiencies that are initially overlooked may later emerge as critical contributing factors. Although analytical tools have advanced dramatically since 1937, the principle that effective road safety decisions must be grounded in objective evidence remains as relevant today as it was when Dr. Burnette advocated it nearly 90 years ago.

Conclusion

Finding this nearly forgotten article at a rural Ontario yard sale was an unexpected reminder that some of the most important ideas in traffic safety have deeper historical roots than many of us might assume. Unlike academic and professional publications, the Canadian Home Journal was intended for the general public. Dr. Burnette's observations therefore appear to have received little attention within the emerging traffic safety literature, and his article has largely been overlooked despite its remarkably modern perspective.

Although today's traffic safety profession benefits from far more advanced analytical tools and technical guidance, it was striking to encounter a Canadian publication from 1937 that was already advocating evidence-based prevention, scientific investigation, interdisciplinary collaboration, and systems-oriented thinking. Although the ideas found in Dr. Burnette’s 1937 article predated Vision Zero and the Safe System approach by many decades, the conceptual parallels are remarkable.

Dr. Burnette concluded his article by stating simply, “The facts demand action.” Nearly ninety years later, those four words remain an appropriate guiding principle for all of us. As road safety professionals, we naturally focus on emerging technologies, evolving design guidance, and new analytical methods. Yet this forgotten article from 1937 reminds us that meaningful innovation sometimes begins by rediscovering ideas that were articulated long before the tools we rely on today existed.

l'existence des outils sur lesquels nous nous appuyons aujourd'hui.

References

[1] Burnette, N. L. (1937). “What Is Wrong with Our Safety Traffic Work?” Canadian Home Journal, May 1937. Scanned copy available at: [https://archive.org/details/canadian-home-journal-may-1937].

[2] Canadian Association of Road Safety Professionals. “Language Matters: The Importance of ‘Collision’ versus ‘Accident’ in Road Safety.” Available at: [https://carsp.ca/en/news/language-matters-the-importance-of-collision-versus-accident-in-road-safety/].