Road
Forecasting Travel Time Reliability in Road Transport. A New Model for The Netherlands
Presentation, slides, speech,
8 November 2015
Improving Safety for Motorcycle, Scooter and Moped Riders
Research Report, Policy Insights,
7 October 2015
- The powered two-wheeler population is increasing and plays a significant role in mobility.
- Powered two-wheeler (PTW) riders are at far greater risk than car drivers.
- Poor perception and control are frequent failures that lead to PTW crashes.
- A Safe System approach is required to improve the safety of PTWs.
- The helmet is the most important source of protection against severe injuries and death.
- Advances in car technology can also bring positive safety benefits to PTW users. There are a number of new technologies, such as forward collision warning, blind spot information and vulnerable road user protection systems, which can prevent collisions, including those with PTW riders, pedestrians and cyclists.
Road Infrastructure Safety Management
IRTAD, Policy Insights,
6 October 2015
- Benchmark road infrastructure against good practices in other countries.
- Implement new minimum safety standards for road infrastructure.
- Continue evaluation and research to quantify safety impacts of planning decisions.
- Implement suitable Road Infrastructure Safety Management procedures for each stage of road development including planning design, pre-opening and full operation.
- Make Road Infrastructure Safety Management procedures legally binding.
- Involve both road and health authorities when developing road accident data bases.
- Assure adequate institutional management capacity and investment levels.
- Use existing tools and guidelines; adopt second-best solutions where state-of-the-art solutions are not feasible.
- Identify the Road Safety Infrastructure Management procedures that fit specific needs and understand barriers to implementation.
- Share good practices of Road infrastructure Safety Management procedures and intervention measures.
- Monitor the safety performance of road infrastructure.
- Develop self-explaining roads.
Why Does Road Safety Improve When Economic Times Are Hard?
IRTAD, Policy Insights,
5 October 2015
- There is clear evidence that when economic growth declines, and particularly when unemployment increases, road safety improves.
- The financial and economic crises which started in 2007 were accompanied by marked falls in annual numbers of road deaths in most OECD countries.
- It is important to understand how much of the accelerated reduction in numbers of deaths during the downturn that began in 2008 was attributable to the changed economic conditions.
- The economic downturn in 2009-10 may well have contributed to about two-thirds of the decrease in fatalities from 2008.
- The recent downturn has had repercussions on the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and unemployment rate and has influenced the number of road deaths through a reduction in vehicle kilometres driven, especially by young men and by heavy goods vehicles, a reduction in speeding and in drink-driving, and a reduction in learning to drive by young men.
- Policy makers need to take careful account of these results when setting road safety targets and when designing road safety strategies for the future.
Spain: Background and Current Status on the Implementation of a Safe System
Presentation, slides, speech,
30 September 2015
Automated and Autonomous Driving
Corporate Partnership Board Report, Policy Insights,
30 April 2015
- Automated driving comprises a diverse set of emerging concepts that must be understood individually and as part of broader trends toward automation and connectivity
- Uncertainty on market deployment strategies and pathways to automation complicates the regulatory task
- Incrementally shifting the driving task from humans to machines will require changes in insurance
- The shift from human to machine may have an impact on what product information developers and manufacturers of autonomous vehicles share, and with whom
- Regulators and developers should actively plan to minimise legacy risks
Cycling, Health and Safety
Research Report, Policy Insights,
19 December 2013
- Insufficient evidence supports causality for the “safety in numbers” phenomenon – policies increasing the number of cyclists should be accompanied by risk-reduction actions.
- Efforts must be made to harmonise definitions of bicycle accident terminology so as to be able to make reliable international comparisons on cyclist safety.
- National authorities should set standards for, collect or otherwise facilitate the collection of data on non-fatal cycling crashes based on police reports and, in either a systematic or periodic way, on hospital records.
- Authorities seeking to improve cyclists’ safety should adopt the Safe System approach - policy should focus on improving the inherent safety of the traffic system, not simply on securing marginal improvements for cyclists in an inherently unsafe system.
- Authorities should establish top-level plans for cycling and cycling safety and should ensure high-level coordination among relevant government agencies to ensure that cycling grows without aggravating safety performance.
- Speed management acts as “hidden infrastructure” protecting cyclists and should be included as an integral part of cycle safety strategies.
- Cyclists should not be the only target of cycling safety policies – motorists are at least as important to target.
- Where appropriate, traffic speeds should be limited to less than 30km/hr where bicycles and motorised traffic mix but care should be taken so that speed control devices do not create hazards for cyclists.
Valuing Convenience in Public Transport in the Korean Context
Presentation, slides, speech,
12 September 2013
Global Freight Volumes Indicate Increasing Dependency On Asia-Led Growth
Statistics Brief,
30 June 2013
Reporting on Serious Road Traffic Casualties
IRTAD, Policy Insights,
1 December 2011
- A complete picture of casualty totals from road crashes is needed to fully assess the consequences of road crashes and monitor progress.
- Injury information should complement information on fatal crashes to give a fuller picture of road crashes. Information on injuries should become more important for international comparisons.
- Police data should remain the main source for road crash statistics. However, because of underreporting problems and possible bias (for example with differing rates of reporting by vehicle type), police data should be complemented by hospital data, which are the next most useful source.
- The data from hospital emergency departments, available in some countries, should be monitored regularly and researched to determine if they might shed more light on road casualties.
- The assessment of the severity of injuries should preferably be done by medical professionals, and not by the police officer at the scene of the crash.
- Medical staff should be trained in order to systematically classify (road traffic) injuries using ICD International Classification of Diseases and to assess severities with indices such as the Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) or the Maximum Abbreviated Injury (MAIS). This information -- without personal information -- should be made easily available for statistical purposes, policymaking and research.
- Besides police data and hospital data, other data sources are available. These have a limited value on their own, and cannot replace police or hospital data, but can be used to build a more balanced and comprehensive picture, to enrich the main data sources, and as a quality check.
- For linking data, the deterministic method is preferred if a unique personal identifier is available; otherwise the probabilistic method is a good alternative.
- The six assumptions needed to use the capture-recapture method must be considered carefully. Using this method combined with linking police and hospital data may be appropriate to give a fuller picture of road casualties.
- Having an internationally agreed definition of “serious” injuries will help the safety research community to better understand the consequences of road crashes and to monitor progress. Given the existing knowledge and practices, IRTAD proposes to define a ‘seriously injured road casualty’ as a person with injuries assessed at level 3 or more on the Maximum Abbreviated Injury Scale i.e. "MAIS3+".
Insurance Market Incentives and Constraints and Complementary Public Policies
Presentation, slides, speech,
31 August 2011
Road Safety Performance: National Peer Review of the Russian Federation. 2010 Update
Policy Brief,
30 April 2011
Moving Freight with Better Trucks
Research Report, Policy Insights,
18 April 2011
- The freight transport task is growing rapidly in most regions and requires effective utilisation of all modes of transport.
- The safety and environmental impacts of road haulage require regulatory intervention for optimal outcomes.
- Compliance can be improved greatly through legislation that assigns responsibility.
- Compliance regimes can be enhanced by exploiting technological innovations.
- A performance based approach to regulation offers the potential to meet community objectives for road freight transport more fully.
- Many higher capacity vehicles have equivalent or even better intrinsic safety characteristics in some respects than most common workhorse trucks.
- Truck crash energies mean safety regulation must pay particular attention to managing truck speeds and driver alertness and impairment.
- Higher capacity vehicles have potential to improve fuel efficiency and reduce emissions.
- Higher capacity vehicles can result in fewer vehicle-kilometres travelled.
- The lower unit costs offered by higher productivity trucks could result in increased overall demand for road freight transport and a transfer of freight from other modes.
- Road pricing systems can be developed to manage use of the transport network more efficiently.
- Road infrastructure and trucks need to be developed in concert.
- Significant opportunities for improvement of the regulation of heavy trucks have been identified.