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.     

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.     

On the use of criteria based on the SMART acronym to assess quality of performance indicators for safety management in process industries

Management of safety, and barriers in particular, includes using information expressing performance, i.e. use of safety performance indicators. For this information to be useful, the indicators should demonstrate adequate quality. In other words, they should satisfy some predefined set of quality criteria. Without showing adequate quality, the indicators are generally unable to provide sufficient support for barrier management, which could result in poor decisions. In this article, the use of the SMART criteria is considered to assess the quality of safety performance indicators in process industries. SMART being an acronym for ‘specificity’, ‘measurability’ or ‘manageability’, ‘achievability’, ‘relevancy’ and ‘time-based’, covering five key aspects and criteria for assessing the quality of an indicator. A discussion on whether the indicators are able to demonstrate adequate quality by satisfying these criteria has been conducted. The finding is that all of the SMART criteria should be satisfied for a safety performance indicator to demonstrate acceptable quality and to be regarded as useful to support barrier management decision-making. However, it has also been observed that including the ‘M’ criterion in the assessment of quality is not needed. When all the other criteria are satisfied there is no way the conclusions could be misleading as a result of measurability or manageability aspects. Hence, for safety performance indicator quality, only four of the criteria are assessed and suggested for such situations to shorten the acronym to ‘STAR’. A key safety indicator used in downstream process facilities, i.e. ‘dangerous fluid overfilling events’, motivated from the 2005 Texas City refinery accident, is used to illustrate the situation. The indicator is also applied to another incident, the Buncefield oil storage depot's accident in 2005, to provide a broader context for using it. The findings in this article could also be applied beyond the context studied. This means that, despite focusing on safety indicators in the process industries, the findings are considered as relevant and applicable to other types of performance indicators and to other energy industries.     

Measuring and understanding road safety performance at local territorial level

Road safety performance has traditionally been measured at national level, because the national authorities have assumed main responsibility for managing road safety of citizens. With the rise of EU governance, the role of national government has slightly decreased while the role of local authorities has been reinforced in many countries, creating a new playfield for policy actions. Assessing road safety performance at local territorial level may provide new inputs needed to trigger further improvements in road safety, as it brings about a higher accountability of policy makers and brings relevant issues closer to citizens. The measures and methods for such evaluation have now become broadly available and their application may bring a difference in current pace of road safety improvements. An example of the application of full Bayes spatio-temporal model on local road risk data is provided, illustrating the potential of local areal analysis for a better road safety management.     

Road safety performance indicators and their explanatory value: A critical view based on the experience of Central European countries

Counts of road crashes and their victims represent essential information for road safety practitioners allowing them to analyse their spatial and temporal aspects. However, they cannot provide details on the factors causing road crashes. As a result, various road safety performance indicators (RSPIs) were introduced, making it possible to gather information on the effectiveness of interventions on road safety in given areas. However, analysis of the trends in road casualties in several Central European countries based on safety performance (measured by RSPIs) suggest that not even these indicators can provide full understanding of road safety trends, and, if they are applied generally without the required background information, this could even lead to serious misinterpretation of the trends in road casualties. Sudden breaks in long-term trends seem to be linked to the transition process and to certain legislative reforms. The exposure and socio-economic climate appear to have had a major impact on road crash outcomes. Various additional indicators describing organisational and structural aspects may be helpful, therefore, in better understanding and predicting the development in road safety for individual 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).     

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.     

Introducing roadside hazard severity indicator based on evidential reasoning approach

Safety experts have, in recent years, been attentive to roadside accident severity and occurrence. Hitherto, to prioritize road segment hazardousness, there have been little efforts to quantify a well defined indicator. In this regard, the existing indicators are usually very plain and the overall configuration of roadside is rated by experts with an exact number describing its condition. Hence, the uncertainties which come with the subjective judgments cannot be regarded as of any substance. This research contribution therefore presents a procedure to assess the road safety (roadside safety indicator) by means of the evidential reasoning (ER) approach. The betterment of ER as opposed to the available procedures for roadside safety assessment is that the proposed approach makes allowance for the uncertainties which may arise from individual judgments. Additionally, when there is a dearth of evidence concerning factors which affect roadside hazardousness severity to collate several roadside segments, this procedure will offer the benefits of utilizing the maximum/minimum utility function. With the aid of the drawn indicator, organizations and agencies responsible for ensuring road safety can reach more flexible decisions to set in-place uncertain planning and road segments priorities. This indicator can also be utilized as a variable to include roadside conditions in crash severity prediction models. A field case study has also been carried out in an attempt to follow and validate the proposed approach which is based on the run-off accident history for a sample road segments. The crash data confirm the suggested indicator.     

Strengthening incentives for efficient road safety policy priorities: The roles of cost–benefit analysis and road pricing

This paper discusses how incentives for setting efficient priorities in road safety policy can be strengthened. Efficient priorities are characterised by the use of cost-effective road safety measures. Cost-effective road safety measures can be identified by means of cost-benefit analyses. Studies of the actual priorities in road safety policy, in particular in the Scandinavian countries, suggest that these priorities are inefficient, i.e. characterised by the non-use or sub-optimal use of cost-effective road safety measures as well as an extensive use of ineffective road safety measures. This occurs despite the fact that road safety policy analyses have included extensive cost-benefit analyses of road safety measures. It would thus appear that cost-benefit analyses do not necessarily generate a sufficient incentive to implement cost-effective road safety measures. Possible reasons for this are discussed in the paper. It is argued that a large part of the monetary benefits of road safety measures, as estimated in cost-benefit analyses, are not subject to market transactions, and do therefore not manifest themselves in the form of increased income or higher profits. While cost-benefit analyses are indispensable as a means of identifying cost-effective road safety measures, their influence on actual road safety policy needs to be strengthened by providing additional incentives for the use of cost-effective road safety measures. It is suggested that a system of road pricing could generate such incentives. A brief sketch of a hypothetical system of road pricing is given and some problems associated with the implementation of this system are discussed.     

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。     

Analyzing the safety impact of longer and heavier vehicles circulating in the European market

Introduction: The European Union (EU) has developed different strategies to internalize the costs of excessive motor traffic in the road freight transport sector. One of these is a relaxation of restrictions on the size and load capacity of trucks that circulate between member States and a proposal has been made for Longer and Heavier Vehicles (LHVs) to be allowed to circulate across borders. LHVs are the so-called “megatrucks” (i.e., trucks with a length of 25 meters and a weight of 60 tonnes). Megatrucks have allowed to circulate for decades in some European countries such as Norway, Finland, and Sweden, world leaders in traffic accident prevention, although the impact that cross-border traffic would have on road safety is still unknown. Methods: This article provides an econometric analysis of the potential impact on road safety of allowing the circulation of “megatrucks” throughout the EU. Results: The findings show that countries that currently allow megatrucks to circulate present lower traffic accident and fatality levels, on average. Conclusions: The circulation of this type of vehicle is only advisable in countries where there is a certain degree of maturity and demonstrated achievements in the field of road safety. Practical applications: European countries that have allowed megatruck circulation obtaining better road safety outcomes in terms of accidents, although the accident lethality rate seems to be higher. Consequently, introducing megatruck circulation requires a prior proper preparation and examination.     

Road transport in drift? Applying contemporary systems thinking to road safety

Despite the extent to which the proximal causes of road traffic injury are known, road trauma remains a substantial and growing component of the global health burden. Application of contemporary sociotechnical systems theory to the problem of traffic injury suggests that the lack of progress globally may be a consequence of “drift into failure”. This article considers the new systems perspective on safety, explores the utility of this approach for road safety efforts, and specifically examines the ‘drift into failure’ hypothesis. It is argued that road transport systems do currently display characteristics of complex systems in drift and that greater understanding of complexity theory-based models will support improved road safety efforts. However, the extent to which such models can support road safety practitioners appears to be limited by the lack of practical tools for translating theory to practice. The article concludes by drawing attention to similarities between complex systems theory and the contexts in which the discipline of Human Factors has been developed, and suggests that Human Factors methodologies could be usefully used to facilitate further research in this field.     

Investigating safety of vulnerable road users in selected EU countries

Problem: Vulnerable road users comprise over half of all road accident victims in the EU and their safety situation is not improving as fast as for motorists. The paper examines factors affecting fatality risk of pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists, and moped riders in seven EU countries using data from CARE database. Method: Comparing accident severity indicators between countries is problematic because of data quality issues, different degree of underreporting, and different exposure levels. To avoid bias arising from these issues, fatality risk is modeled with binary logistic regression. Risk factors considered include accident location by area type, junction type, and traffic control, as well as lighting condition. Results are presented as odds ratios of fatal accident outcome in different countries under specific circumstances compared to reference conditions. It is shown that the error in OR values due to underreporting is small. Results and discussion: Wide confidence intervals of the odds ratios in some countries confirm problems with accident data quality. Fatality risk is always higher for non-urban versus urban area and for darkness versus daylight conditions, but the odds ratios are different for different countries. Inconsistent results are obtained for accident location with respect to junction and its control type. Possible reasons for these differences are suggested and discussed. Practical applications: The proposed method avoids the data quality bias of accident severity indicators, thus, it can be used in international comparisons of vulnerable road user accidents. The article findings also support the concept of changes in legislation, such as reducing the speed limit in urban areas in Poland at night. Generally, the experience of countries with low VRU fatality risk identified in the article can be transferred to those with a higher risk.     

The role of safety research in road safety management

Mobility is a matter of great importance in daily life: However, it also causes costs and involves accident risks. To make mobility safer and reduce accident risks, a scientifically based road safety management is needed. Within such a safety management system, a concert of adequate and efficient strategies, tools and measures is developed and implemented. To ensure that the chosen means are efficient they should be derived from research evidence. Secondly, research is also needed to regularly monitor the impact of road safety management tools, serving as a “controlling instrument” for the appropriateness of safety management efforts. This article explains the main strategic aspects of safety management in Germany and illustrates it exemplarily on the basis of two recently implemented road safety measures.     

特种设备安全绩效与安全监管能力相关性研究

为强化特种设备安全监管,基于组织能力理论,通过文献计量和专家调查等方法,对特种设备安全绩效和安全监管能力的相关指标进行研究,初步确定27项监管能力指标和4项安全绩效指标。采用相关性分析法,选择安全绩效指标中万台设备事故起数作为基准指标,计算该指标与监管能力和安全绩效各指标的Spearman相关系数。在总体趋势上,基准指标与监管能力指标呈现负相关,与安全绩效指标呈现正相关。计算结果表明:可从增加监管资源投入,提高人员素质,严格监管执行过程等方面提高特种设备安全监管能力。     

Leading indicators of system safety – Monitoring and driving the organizational safety potential

An indicator can be considered any measure – quantitative or qualitative – that seeks to produce information on an issue of interest. Safety indicators can play a key role in providing information on organizational performance, motivating people to work on safety and increasing organizational potential for safety. We will describe the challenges of monitoring and driving system safety. Currently, the same lead indicators are used – explicitly or implicitly – for both purposes. The fact that the selection and use of safety performance indicators is always based on a certain understanding (a model) of the sociotechnical system and safety is often forgotten. We present a theoretical framework for utilizing safety performance indicators in safety–critical organizations that incorporates three types of safety performance indicators – outcome, monitor and drive indicators. We provide examples of each type of indicator and discuss the application of the framework in organizational safety management. We argue that outcome indicators are lag indicators since outcomes always follow something; they are the consequences arising from multiple other situational and contextual factors. Monitor and drive indicators are lead indicators. The main function of the drive indicators is to direct the sociotechnical activity in the organization by motivating certain safety-related activities. Monitor indicators provide a view on the dynamics of the organization: the practices, abilities, skills and motivation of the personnel – the organizational potential for safety. We conclude that organizations should better acknowledge the significance of monitor and drive indicators in safety management.     

Implementing a safety culture in a major multi-national

This paper reports on the implementation of an advanced safety culture in a major oil and gas multi-national. The original proposal came from the company after it had become clear that expectations had been raised after the successful implementation of Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) Management Systems subsequent to the Piper Alpha disaster. The proposal made by the company, to develop a workforce intrinsically motivated for HSE, was operationalised as the development of an advanced safety culture after a review of the literature on motivation. The model used was the HSE Culture Ladder that had become the industry standard accepted by the OGP (International Association of Oil and Gas Producers). This model was intended to show that there were considerable opportunities for improvement even after HSE-MS had been implemented and that the more advanced cultures were ones people felt were desirable and achievable for themselves. Once top management had provided the initial support for the development of a more advanced safety culture, a number of supporting tools were developed, under the Hearts and Minds brand, and a strategy for implementation was developed that relied more on bottom-up ‘pull’ rather than top-down ‘push’ – the standard implementation model for new initiatives. The tools were designed to provide a clear direction, a road map to an advanced culture defined in terms provided by people within the industry, to support lasting changes in attitudes and beliefs, to promote an increased feeling of control when solving HSE-specific problems – all components of a more advanced culture. The tactics employed, using a pull rather than a push approach, had to allow for local variation within the general limits set by the strategy that eventually became a mixed top-down and bottom-up approach. Next there is a discussion of the current status and the lessons to be learnt from the implementation so far: moving away from command and control is hard for large organizations; such programs have to be driven by different performance indicators; managers have to learn to disperse their control; it is essential to communicate both successes and failures. Finally there is a discussion about the respective roles of academia and the industry in such endeavours, the requirement to concentrate on more than a single cultural characteristic such as reporting, and the difficulties of evaluating such programs in a worldwide environment that is continuously changing.     

Perceived benefits of applying Pay for Safety Scheme (PFSS) in construction – A factor analysis approach

In recent years, construction safety has been a hot topic in Hong Kong. The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) has launched different safety measures to improve the prevailing safety performance of the construction industry. The Pay for Safety Scheme (PFSS) has emerged as one of the major safety initiatives launched within the public sector construction industry since 1996. It aims to encourage the safety awareness by taking the contractor’s pricing for safety-related items out from the consideration of competitive bidding. The objective is to provide a concise review of the prevailing application of PFSS in Hong Kong in general, and to identify and analyse the key benefits of PFSS in construction through an industry-wide empirical questionnaire survey in particular. Altogether, 145 industrial practitioners who have derived extensive hands-on experience with the PFSS construction projects participated in the survey to indicate their levels of agreement to those 14 key benefits identified which were measured and analysed by factor analysis. The results of factor analysis indicated that the 14 individual benefits of implementing PFSS were consolidated under four underlying factors: (1) Enhancing safety climate and attitude; (2) Promoting effective safety-related communication; (3) Streamlining the safety procedures; and (4) Ensuring adequate safety training. A wider application of PFSS should be encouraged with a view to achieving better safety performance within the industry. It is recommended that a similar scheme to PFSS currently applied in Hong Kong may be developed for implementation in other regions or countries for international comparisons.     

Progress towards zero,an international comparison: Improvements in traffic fatality from 1990 to 2010 for different age groups in the USA and 15 of its peers

IntroductionIn January 2015, the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) announced that the official target of the federal government transportation safety policy was zero deaths. Having a better understanding of traffic fatality trends of various age cohorts—and to what extent the US is lagging other countries—is a crucial first step to identifying policies that may help the USDOT achieve its goal.MethodIn this paper we analyze fatality rates for different age cohorts in developed countries to better understand how road traffic fatality patterns vary across countries by age cohort. Using benchmarking analysis and comparative index analysis based on panel data modelling and data for selected years between 1990 and 2010, we compare changes in the rate of road traffic fatality over time, as well as the absolute level of road traffic fatality for six age groups in the US, with 15 other developed countries.Results-ConclusionsOur findings illustrate tremendous variations in road fatality rates (both in terms of the absolute values and the rates of improvement over time) among different age cohorts in all of the 16 countries. Looking specifically at the US, our analysis shows that safety improvements for Youngsters (15-17 years old) was much better than for other age groups, and closely tracked peer countries. In sharp contrast, Children (0-14 years old) and Seniors (+65 years old) in the US, fare very poorly when compared to peer countries. For example, in 2010, Children in the US were a stunning five times more likely to experience a road traffic fatality than Children in the UK.Practical ApplicationsThis startling statistic suggests an immediate need to explore further the causes and potential solutions to these disparities. This is especially important if countries, including the US, are to achieve the ambitious goals set out in Zero Vision initiatives.     

Reinforcing the rules or integrating behavioural responses into road planning

Road planning is based on technical rules, know-how acquired from experience and professional expertise. A more ergonomics approach to road planning and safety analyses the psychological procedures used by the drivers. Every intervention on road network has an influence on safety. Increasing the coherency of all the interventions in the same area is the only possible way of producing areas with a better level of security. This paper deals with safety procedures, diagnostics and tools which can be used at different levels of intervention.