Sweden has a long tradition of systematic road safety work and to consider road traffic injuries as a public problem that must be addressed by the national government. This attitude culminated in the Swedish parliament in October 1997 formally adopting Vision Zero as a new long-term goal and direction in road traffic safety work. Vision Zero aims to not only influence directly the concrete work on road safety, but also – more indirectly – the institutional preconditions and approaches, which in turn also have an impact on the actions of various players so that they take action to increase the safety of the road transport system. Vision Zero differs from a more traditional road safety policy with regard to problem formulation, its view on responsibility, its requirements for the safety of road users, and the ultimate objective of road safety work. In this presentation Vision Zero, its implementation and diffusion to other sectors of the society will be presented and discussed.