Abstract
Systems thinking models and methods are currently popular in road safety research. Though the philosophy is beginning to gain traction in road safety, work is required to fully translate and embed its core principles and approaches in practice. A critical element of this involves communicating and demonstrating the core principles of systems theory to road safety practitioners. The aim of this chapter is to present an overview of the systems thinking approach, demonstrate how it has been applied to date in road safety, and outline some critical initial steps to support its implementation in road safety practice. We present a series of case studies focused on road crash analysis and the fatal five causes of road trauma to demonstrate how systems thinking principles and methods can usefully be applied. To close, we discuss the implications for road safety practice by first presenting a set of key principles that road safety stakeholders can adopt to facilitate the translation of systems thinking in road safety practice and second by examining how current road safety strategies could potentially be modified to incorporate core systems thinking principles.