Roadside trees and traffic safety policies

One of the traditional reasons for tree planting has been the creation of a convivial environment that is walkable and liveable and therefore safer. While historically, safety concerns were dominated by accidents caused by the condition of the road surface, after the arrival of motorised traffic it has become focussed on collisions. Worldwide some 1 million people die in traffic accidents annually. As a result, there has been an international drive to reduce the number of casualties. After establishing why and how roadside trees were initially planted to aid safety, this chapter explores their known psychological benefits and reviews the leading international road safety policies (woonerf, Shared Space, Forgiving Roads and Self-explaining Roads). It identifies both positive examples and those where the qualities of trees to increase safety are not sufficiently being contextualized. In doing so it challenges the ‘integrated system approach to Sustainable Safety’ that has initiated the latest policies. It concludes that road safety needs to be considered within a wider context than the singular siloed approaches that are currently being followed, and that with regard to achieving sustainability trees can be proven to be part of the solution rather than the problem.