Road safety in France: The hard path toward science-based policy

Very considerable advances have been made in road safety over the long term and especially in the recent years. This improvement was achieved in part due to the effectiveness of French decision-making system, even if it remained very perfectible. An analysis of the road safety management system is carried out in order to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the organisation of road safety in France.The organisation of road safety in France is extremely centralised. The basis of road safety policy at the national level rests on an extensive information system (covering accidents, risk exposure, speed, utilisation of mobile phones) and on analyses of road risk (the risks attributable to alcohol, speed and the use of mobile phones).This statistical information and these risk models are integrated in risk management tools such as monitoring, ranking and policing. Monitoring makes it possible to track the development of road safety, bench-marking to compare the performance of the country’s different departments with each other, and policy making to refine the details of a policy.The development of the governance of road risk is leading managers and decision-makers to perfect data-gathering procedures, standardise and simplify the analytical tools used, and broaden the range of risks covered.     

水射流技术与安全生产

本文摘要介绍了高压水射流新技术的特点，尤其是利于安全的特点。我国把安全生产作为重要国策，并且决定采用各种新技术，提高生产技术的现代化水平，来解决生产安全问题，而水射流技术在近十多年的应用中已崭露头角。文中以煤炭、化工、核电、军工四个行业为代表，介绍了采用高压水射流新技术后，在安全生产方面取得的各种效果。从文中例举的情况可以看到：（１）水射流技术是先进安全技术；（２）水射流技术是很多行业安全生产的重要手段。随着水射流技术的推广，将提高不少行业的安全生产水平。     

Work-related road safety: A case study of Roche Australia

Fleet, work-related or occupational road safety has the potential to make a major contribution to reducing both human harm and asset damage. To date, however, there would appear to be a dearth of well researched and evaluated case studies in the public domain in this area.This paper provides an on-going, documented, real-world case study of work-related road safety within an Australian company that has sought to manage, monitor and improve its road safety performance over the last 5 years through a range of proactive, fleet manager, insurance and risk-led initiatives.Roche Australia has successfully implemented a Company Motor Vehicle Safety Program with support from its fleet insurers and risk management advisors. Four key initiatives are set out covering: (1) Driver risk assessment, monitoring and improvement. (2) Policy development and communications. (3) Process and outcomes evaluation. (4) Continuous review and refinement of policies, processes, programs and future developments.The program has led to a range of process and performance-based outcomes. Typical barriers to success in work-related road safety have been identified and overcome. Almost 100% risk assessment and improvement process compliance by drivers has been achieved. A predictive relationship between risk assessment outcomes and collision history has been identified. Reductions in insurance claims, collision costs and claims ratio have been sustained. A detailed project plan is in place to continue the program for the next 3 years.The paper concludes that with effective management, a well developed work-related road safety program can result in performance improvements within the initiating organisation. Several limitations in the case study methodology, as well as areas for further work and lessons for policy makers, researchers and practitioners are also identified.     

Benchmarking road safety performances of countries

In order to obtain political interest in road safety problems and to learn from other countries’ ‘good practices’, it is often helpful to compare one’s own safety situation with that of other countries. In a number of projects tools have been developed for such comparisons. These tools range from simple ratings of countries on their safety outcomes, such as the annual number of fatalities per capita or per kilometre driven by (motor)vehicles to more comprehensive comparisons.These comparisons not only show differences in safety between countries, but to a certain extent also explain such differences in terms of their safety background and measures taken. Finally, tools have been defined to support road safety policy makers in developing possible safety measures or actions. Procedures for such complex safety comparisons have been developed and tested in several so-called SUNflower studies.This promising approach can be further developed into standard procedures for safety comparisons between all countries in the European Union, and other countries worldwide. This paper wishes to outline the development of such standards for the benchmarking of road safety and safety trends as well as procedures for quantifying safety performances of countries.Starting point of this conceptual framework is the so-called SUNflower-pyramid in which three types of indicators are distinguished. The first one of these, the road safety performance indicator, is called an outcome indicator and is based on the number of killed and injured road users. The second indicator type indicates the quality of the implementation of road safety policies: the implementation performance indicators. The third type of indicator indicates the quality of response in policy documents to improve road safety (policy performance indicator). The three types of indicators are embedded in a policy context: the structure and culture of a country, which are considered as background variables.This paper sets out to describe the framework for the development of a comprehensive set of indicators to benchmark road safety performances of countries or of sub-national jurisdictions. The paper also discusses the advantages and disadvantages of combining such indicators and if combined, how to aggregate how different indicators in one composite performance index. It is argued to group countries in different classes with more or less comparable countries. Different procedures are used for this grouping. The results are promising and it is recommended to work with classes of countries.     

Projecting effects of improvements in passive safety of the New Zealand light vehicle fleet

OBJECTIVES: In the year 2000, as part of the process for setting New Zealand road safety targets, a projection was made for a reduction in social cost of 15.5 percent associated with improvements in crashworthiness, which is a measure of the occupant protection of the light passenger vehicle fleet. Since that document was produced, new estimates of crashworthiness have become available, allowing for a more accurate projection. The objective of this paper is to describe a methodology for projecting changes in casualty rates associated with passive safety features and to apply this methodology to produce a new prediction. METHOD: The shape of the age distribution of the New Zealand light passenger vehicle fleet was projected to 2010. Projected improvements in crashworthiness and associated reductions in social cost were also modeled based on historical trends. These projections of changes in the vehicle fleet age distribution and of improvements in crashworthiness together provided a basis for estimating the future performance of the fleet in terms of secondary safety. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: A large social cost reduction of about 22 percent for 2010 compared to the year 2000 was predicted due to the expected huge impact of improvements in passive vehicle features on road trauma in New Zealand. Countries experiencing improvements in their vehicle fleets can also expect significant reductions in road injury compared to a less crashworthy passenger fleet. Such road safety gains can be analyzed using some of the methodology described here.     

Designing a composite indicator for road safety

This study set out to develop a composite road safety indicator for benchmarking countries’ road safety performance, which would combine the main layers of the road safety pyramid which describes the complex nature of road safety activities, performance and outcomes. Four groups of basic safety indicators were considered, which refer to: policy performance (road safety programmes), final road safety outcomes (fatality rates, scope of traffic injury), intermediate outcomes (wearing rates of seat belts, crashworthiness and composition of vehicle fleet, alcohol-impaired driving), and background characteristics of countries (motorization level, population density). The analysis used the data collected for 27 European countries. Weights based on statistical models were used to combine the basic indicators into a composite one. Principal Component Analysis and Common Factor Analysis weighting were examined. The composite indicators, estimated by several methods, enabled us to rank and group the countries according to their safety performance.The analysis revealed that the countries’ ranking based on the composite indicators is not necessarily similar to the traditional ranking of countries based on fatality rates only. Furthermore, it was observed that the indicators belonging to the final outcomes and intermediate outcomes are not uniform in their behaviour. Indicators which were found to be more consistent and influential and termed a ‘core set of basic indicators’ are recommended for future uses. The general conclusion is that the design of a composite road safety indicator in which relevant information from the different components of the road safety pyramid has been captured and weighted is realistic and meaningful. Such an indicator gives a more enriched picture of road safety than a ranking based only on fatality rates, which is the common practice at present. Grouping countries in this process is promising and seems to be preferable to simply ranking countries.     

When may road fatalities start to decrease?

Introduction

The comparative analysis of macroscopic trends in road safety has been a popular research topic. The objective of this research is to propose a simple and, at the same time, reliable multiple regime model framework for international road safety comparisons, allowing for the identification of slope changes of personal risk curves and respective breakpoints.

Method

The trends of road traffic fatalities in several EU countries have been examined through the temporal evolution of elementary socioeconomic indicators, namely motorized vehicle fleet and population, at the country level.

Results

Piece-wise linear regression models have been fitted, using a methodology that allows the simultaneous estimation of all slopes and breakpoints. The number and location of breakpoints, as well as the slope of the connecting trends, vary among countries, thus indicating different road safety evolution patterns.

Impact on industry

Macroscopic analysis of road accident trends may be proved beneficial for the identification of best examples and the implementation of appropriate programmes and measures, which will lead to important benefits for the society and the economy through the reduction of road fatalities and injuries. Best performing countries and the related programmes and measures adopted may concern several safety improvements at the processes of the road, the vehicle and the insurance industries.

Conclusions

Lessons from the analysis of the past road safety patterns of developed countries provide some insight into the underlying process that relates motorization levels with personal risk and can prove to be beneficial for predicting the road safety evolution of developing countries that may have not yet reached the same breakpoints. Furthermore, the presented framework may serve as a basis to build more elaborate models, including more reliable exposure indicators (such as vehicle-km driven).     

Is the effect of quantified road safety targets sustainable?

Recent studies have shown that the setting of road safety targets is associated with a substantial reduction in road fatalities in the short-term. Although such targets may not themselves be responsible for the reduction in fatalities, they serve as a useful measure of the intention and commitment of road authorities to formulate timely road safety measures that lead to the achievement of the target. A quantified target is regarded as one of the key components of a road safety strategy. However, few studies have examined the degree of commitment and attention of road authorities to such targets in the long-term. In this study, we revisit the effectiveness of the quantified road safety targets set by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, but with a different method, time scale, and group of comparison countries. We not only evaluate the associations between quantified targets and road fatality levels, but also measure the changes in the time-series trends in road fatalities over the long-term. The results indicate that all seven treatment countries analyzed experienced desirable changes in the time-series trend in road fatalities during the period under study, which implies an increase in road safety improvement over time.     

Workers’ Involvement—A Missing Component in the Implementation of Occupational Safety and Health Management Systems in Enterprises

Effective implementation of occupational safety and health (OSH) legislation based on European Union directives requires promotion of OSH management systems ( OSH MS). To this end, voluntary Polish standards (PN-N-18000) have been adopted, setting forth OSH MS specifications and guidelines. However, the number of enterprises implementing OSH MS has increased slowly, falling short of expectations, which call for a new national policy on OSH MS promotion. To develop a national policy in this area, a survey was conducted in 40 enterprises with OSH MS in place. The survey was aimed at identifying motivational factors underlying OSH MS implementation decisions. Specifically, workers’ and their representatives’ involvement in OSH MS implementation was investigated. The results showed that the level of workers ‘ involvement was relatively low, which may result in a low effectiveness of those systems. The same result also applies to the involvement of workers’ representatives and that of trade unions.     

Workers' involvement--a missing component in the implementation of occupational safety and health management systems in enterprises.

Effective implementation of occupational safety and health (OSH) legislation based on European Union directives requires promotion of OSH management systems (OSH MS). To this end, voluntary Polish standards (PN-N-18000) have been adopted, setting forth OSH MS specifications and guidelines. However, the number of enterprises implementing OSH MS has increased slowly, falling short of expectations, which call for a new national policy on OSH MS promotion. To develop a national policy in this area, a survey was conducted in 40 enterprises with OSH MS in place. The survey was aimed at identifying motivational factors underlying OSH MS implementation decisions. Specifically, workers' and their representatives' involvement in OSH MS implementation was investigated. The results showed that the level of workers' involvement was relatively low, which may result in a low effectiveness of those systems. The same result also applies to the involvement of workers' representatives and that of trade unions.     

Towards a method to forecast the effectiveness of national road safety programmes

During the last three decades a more rational approach to political decision making has produced an increasing demand for scientific evaluation. A common understanding of evidence-based policy is that any new measures should have been proven to be effective. At best, these kinds of methodologically sound evaluation studies show the effect of a measure in a given situation. The results are then an essential basis for the design of a broader safety policy. However, at present there is generally little understanding of the effect of the measure in another situation, or of how it would interact with other measures in a programme. Yet, it is precisely such questions that need to be answered if the requirements of policy makers are to be met. Politicians need to be able to estimate whether the expected benefits of a programme justify the investment. Therefore, evidence-based road safety policy should not rely solely on evaluation studies of single measures and ex-post assessments of safety programmes. The method outlined here is for the ex-ante estimation of the potential of a road safety programme, which takes into account existing scientific research, an estimate of the degree of implementation that can be expected at a certain point in time, and the interaction between individual measures.     

Risks of faults intrinsic to software languages: Trade-off between design performance and application safety

A lot of products embed software applications carrying out complex functions (e.g. cars, aircrafts, and medical equipments). More and more authority for control is placed on these applications whose failures may lead to accidental loss. Numerous methods have been developed to prevent these failures. These methods apply either to the programs developed or to the design activities. However, the programming or modelling languages used to operationalise the solutions as software applications are rarely questioned. These languages constitute the technology of realization of the program. On one hand, the language features are selected to increase the development performance and to decrease the software application costs. On the other hand, these features may be at the origin of specific types of faults which constitute the intrinsic risks of these languages. Therefore, the choice of a language or of a subset of a language, leads to a decision-making issue of how to deal making safety and performance trade-offs. The first part of the paper analyzes the evolution of the programming languages. We show that these changes were aimed at the convergence of design performance improvement with designed application safety. The introduction of the object-oriented technologies breaks this commonality. They cut the development expenditures but introduce new types of faults. The decision-makers such as the critical software application producers (e.g. the aircraft manufacturers) and the authorities (e.g. the avionics certification authorities) have to deal with this trade-off. These new technologies cannot be just rejected as they are more and more often used in certain domains (e.g. mobile phones, internet applications). The proposed constraint on using them seem to be too restrictive and are not justified. In particular, the safety levels of software programs developed applying these constraints are not assessed. The second part of the paper addresses these questions. It specifies the problem and it proposes a method to estimate the risk of faults in object-oriented programs. Thus, the decision-makers can elaborate rules for using object-oriented languages establishing a trade-off between the wished-for development performance and the required safety levels.     

Methodological application of system dynamics for evaluating traffic safety policy

System dynamics (SDs) is a methodology that can be used to understand the behavior and dynamics of complex systems over time. SD utilizes a range of tools and techniques such as influence and causal loop diagrams, computer simulation and optimization. SD has been used to facilitate the analysis of complex physical and social systems, e.g. water resources, climate change and industrial accidents. One of the key reasons for its growing popularity is that it allows policy experimentation and facilitates the discussion of ‘what-if’ scenarios. Within the realm of road traffic research, SD has been primarily used to examine micro level issues such as the interactions between the driver, infrastructure and the vehicle. Even though such micro level analysis are important, macro traffic safety policies can create more sustainable systems that pre-empt safety issues and reduce likelihood of traffic accidents. This paper develops two models to demonstrate how the methodology of SD can facilitate and encourage macro and meso level analysis of traffic safety policy. The first model is used to assess policy options so as to encourage the purchase of cars with higher safety ratings. The second model, is used to evaluate the impact of public transport policies on travel time and traffic safety considerations. The strength and weaknesses of the SD methodology in road transport/safety analysis are also examined. It is suggested that SD is most appropriate for formulating macro level policy as it can account for the dynamic complexity associated with the road transport system.     

Analysis of recent trends in bus and coach safety in Britain

We examine in detail trends from 1966 to 1990 and the fitting of statistical models to assess whether significant changes have taken place in casualty rates since local bus deregulation in 1986.The major source of data is the ‘Stats 19’ collated from police reports by the Department of Transport.The evidence indicates that no significant change in casualty rates for bus and coach occupants (defined as those killed or seriously injured) has occurred since local bus deregulation, although the previous trend of reduction in fatality rates has not been maintained.International comparisons have been made between Britain and a sample of other West European countries. Britain appears to have a higher occupant fatality rate. However, other countries′ data do not always include casualties to bus and coach occupants other than those in which vehicular collisions occur. Better comparative data is available for accidents involving buses and coaches with other road users, notably for Britain and Germany. These suggest that such accidents tend to reflect the national pattern of road casualty rates — for example, Germany has a higher level of collisions between buses and coaches, and other road vehicles, while Britain has a relatively high incidence of casualties involving pedestrians.Differences in accident rates between Britain and other European countries and the extent to which they reflect real differences, as distinct from those due to differences in recording of data, are evaluated, along with policy implications.     

汽车道路试验安全管理体系建设研究

为了保障汽车道路试验安全、提高安全管理水平,设计提出汽车道路试验安全管理体系(SMS)总方案。根据OHSAS 18001和安全标准化规范的特点分析,论证了融合两种体系建立道路试验SMS的适用性。并从政策与目标、风险管理、安全保证和安全促进四个模块阐述了该体系的搭建思路、框架内容和搭建步骤。最后,以某自主品牌车企研发中心道路试验的应用情况为例进行效果评估,结果表明:汽车道路试验SMS能有效防控风险、提升试验安全管理水平。     

中国职业安全卫生概论及建筑业安全生产经验

保护劳动者在劳动过程中的安全与健康,明载于《中华人民共和国宪法》,是我国的一项基本国策,中国政府为贯彻执行这一国策,在职业安全卫生工作中实行了“安全第一,预防为主”的方针,实行了“国家劳动安全监察制度”,建立了国家监察、检测检验、宣传教育、科学研究和信息的五大保证系统,并加快了职业安全卫生立法工作的进程,为降低伤亡事故,改善劳动条件做出了很大的贡献。随着经济建设的迅速发展,中国大陆的建筑队伍不断扩大。为确保建筑施工安全,国家对建筑队伍、对起重机械和机动车辆、对建筑企业经理与特殊工种的操作人员、对施工现场均采取了一系列行之有效的安全监察措施,促进了建筑安全工作的开展。     

Measurement of traffic conflicts

Traditionally road accident statistics are used to assess the level of road safety and evaluate road safety programs. In some cases, the lack of good and reliable accident records have hampered proper analyses. A promising approach that overcomes this problem is the traffic conflict technique which relies on observations of critical traffic situations for safety analysis. However, despite the extent of work undertaken in traffic conflict research, there are still a number of issues on conflict measurement and application that have not been well understood by many safety analysts. This has resulted in a general lack of support for the wider application of the technique in safety analysis. This paper shows that one way of using the traffic conflict technique effectively is to ensure that conflicts are quantitatively defined, objectively measured and suitably applied. Before establishing the proposed framework for conflict analysis, the paper first discusses the problems and weaknesses often associated with conflict studies. Considerations for a conflict study based on the proposed approach are then presented and the case of an expressway merging is used to illustrate the method adopted.     

我国道路交通安全规划基本框架研究

在分析我国道路交通安全形势及发展趋势的基础上,阐述《中华人民共和国道路交通安全法》、《中华人民共和国道路交通安全法实施条例》所要求的制定我国道路交通安全规划的重要性,以及道路交通安全规划对预防道路交通事故的重要指导意义和现实意义。研究发达国家道路交通安全规划的框架结构和规划内容;从宏观的角度提出我国交通安全规划定位的高起点要求;探讨了规划的基本框架结构———规划的实施目标、战略重点和政策保障措施及其相互关系;针对我国实际情况创造性地提出了我国道路交通安全规划非单一性的实施目标;给出了确保规划目标顺利完成应优先考虑的战略重点以及国家政策保障措施。     

加拿大油气管道安全管理体系及其启示

建立系统完善的安全管理体系是保障油气管道安全运行的基础。通过分析加拿大立法特点,梳理国家层面和地方层面管道安全监管机构设置与职责,研究管道安全法规体系,明确了加拿大油气管道安全监管体制和全生命周期安全管理体系。研究了管道企业安全管理体系和管道全生命周期各个阶段的关键工作,分析了行业协会在管道安全管理方面发挥的积极作用,掌握了管道完整性管理方面的经验与成果。在此基础上对中加油气管道安全管理情况进行了对比分析,从重视管道安全监管立法、建立全生命周期安全管理体系、完善油气管道标准规范、实施管道完整性管理、建立统一呼叫系统和管道地图系统、鼓励社会各方共同参与管道保护等方面提出了加强我国油气管道安全管理的建议措施。研究成果对于完善我国油气管道安全管理体系具有指导作用。     

Driver Fatigue and Road Safety on Poland’s National Roads

This paper presents an overview of factors causing driver fatigue as described in the literature. Next, a traffic crash database for 2003–2007 is used to identify the causes, circumstances and consequences of accidents caused by driver fatigue on Poland’s national roads. The results of the study were used to build a model showing the relationship between the concentration of road accidents and casualties, and the time of day. Finally, the level of relative accident risk at night-time versus daytime is defined. A map shows the risk of death and severe injury on the network of Poland’s national roads. The paper suggests to road authorities steps to reduce fatigue-related road accidents in Poland.