Safe communities and injury prevention: convergence in a global quest or an experiment in "Empowered deliberative democracy"?

Abstract

Safety is a much wider concept than the absence of injury, in the same way that health is much wider than the absence of disease. The fundamental idea behind developing a Safe Community is to address all kinds of safety and prevent injuries in all areas, encompassing all ages, environments and situations, and involving both non-governmental and governmental community sectors. The tasks of society (including the state) have become more complex, and the size of polities larger and more heterogeneous. The institutional forms of liberal democracy developed in the nineteenth century - representative democracy plus tech no-bureaucratic administration - seem increasingly ill-suited for the novel problems we face. Injury prevention still relies on those institutional forms. (term-accident-vs-injury)