New government assignment to the Swedish Transport Administration on better road infrastructure

3 November 2021 | Stockholm (Sweden)

Sweden, the country of Vision Zero, is also committed to ensure safer driving conditions for automated and connected vehicles from the infrastructure side.

Following a new assignment from the Government to Trafikverket (Swedish Transport Administration) adopted on the 2nd of November, it will be necessary to report on the condition of the road infrastructure to facilitate smooth and safe deployment of connected and automated driving systems. The information must be reported to the Ministry of Infrastructure no later than 29 July 2022.

Among other goals, the technical information provided in the report may be intended to ensure that road markings are designed and maintained to avoid any conflict for example between machine-read or traffic signs or markings. In words of Toni Ogemark (Chairman of Scandinavian Road Marking Association, SVMF) “the new assignment offers good confidence on the government that is indeed considering the necessity of better road markings with the ultimate goal of reducing accidents while keeping our country as a reference in road safety at global level”.

Trafikverket is further requested to develop a maintenance strategy for road markings, and other important road equipment, in order to promote and support automated vehicles to ensure good driving conditions for the human and machine visions.

As the main body in the sector, the Scandinavian Road Marking Association can highly contribute to achieve the expected results by sharing the technical knowledge gained by the execution of several public contracts. As an example, it has been seen that the performance level on road markings is higher in the so-called Performance contracts compared to the execution ones.

For further info about national plans in Sweden, please click here.