As a policy that is widely used worldwide, Vision Zero is a long-term strategic goal for road safety in China. The aim of this paper is to examine the literature in the field of Vision Zero retrieved by the Web of Science (WOS) Core Collection database from 1997 to 2021 based on mapping knowledge domain (MKD) and bibliometric methods. In this paper, we analyzed the overall development level of Vision Zero at different stages using the statistical analysis of the distribution of literature years. Based on the analysis, four major research directions of Vision Zero are obtained through keywords co-occurrence analysis, including "Vision Zero in road safety", "vulnerable road users' risks", "effect of speed on severity", and "responsibility management for crashes". Furthermore, we explore the influence and development potential of each country and region of Vision Zero based on the number and citation frequency of the literature, and the distribution of time dimensions. Among the research topics, all countries and regions are clustered into four clusters, and the current status of Vision Zero for countries in the most influential clusters, which include Sweden, the United States, Australia, China, and Norway, have been presented. Finally, an analysis of road safety in China is carried out, which includes displaying the changes in the number of road accidents, fatalities, and serious injuries in China between 2009 and 2018, comparing the fatalities per 10,000 vehicles and the fatalities per 100,000 people between China and other countries, and describing China's strategic routes toward Vision Zero.
Keywords: VOSviewer; Vision Zero; mapping knowledge domain; road safety; visualization analysis.