The Nature and Dimensions of the Road Safety Problem

Hossein Naraghi

CE 590 Special Topics

Safety

January 2003

Introduction About half a million people die and 10-15

million people are injured in traffic crashes across the world each year.

Road trauma is an important dilemma for industrial and developing countries.

Travel is one of the most dangerous activities faced by the people of industrial and developing countries.

Introduction (Cont.)

Road Safety problem must be considered with reference to:

•Economic,•Humanitarian and•Public Health frameworks.

Mobility Concerns

Since movement creates kinetic energy, the energy exchanged can be damaging to all involved human and properties in time of a collision.

By replacing the animal drawn transport with motorized transport, the speed and mobility increased.

Mobility and Risk Increasing mobility caused more risk.

Faster and more travel created more risk.

More exposure and traveling with higher speed were the major reasons that death and injury on the roads became an important issue during the twentieth century.

Statistics

The major cause of death for people aged 5 to 35 years in Australia is the road system, which is about 3 percent of all deaths.

Majority of the crash victims in Australia are young people.

The loss of productivity is substantial as the result of reduction in the length of life.

Cost of Road Crashes Australia Bureau of Transport and Communications

Economics estimated the cost of the road trauma to be $4,900 Million in 1993, which is about 1.6 percent of the Australia Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

UK estimated economic cost of crashes was 1.7 percent of GDP in 1994.

In US, the economic cost of crashes was between 1.0 – 1.5 of GDP at the same time.

Crash Cost (Cont.)

All these cost figures emphasize the economic significance of road trauma.

There is an strong economic certainty for tackling this problem.

Contrast of Social and Personal perception

The road crash problem has perceived differently from social and personal point of views.

Although the economic and public health issues resulting from road crashes are very significant, the individual perceive the hazard extremely small.

Example

As an example estimated, the probability of being killed in a road crash in Australia is:

• One in one thousand per year or• One in one million per trip or• One in one hundred per life time

Risk Measurement (Cont.) 1. Personal

The personal risk may be measured in terms of death per vehicle miles traveled (VMT).

This measure shows an overall safety improvement in all countries in which data are available

Risk Measurement (Cont.) 2. Social

The societal risk is measured in terms of deaths per head of population.

Looking at this measurements for the same countries show that the rate of safety improvements is not as great as it is for personal risk measures.

Risk Measurement (Cont.)

This investigation shows that each mile of travel has become safer.

Since demand for travel has increased at the same time, so the death rate per head of population decreased less dramatically.

Safety and Mobility

It can be seen that there is an strong correlation between mobility and safety.

The rate of fatality per VMT, motivate the decision makers to put more emphasize to mobility than safety.

The great progress by the medical science on the other hand saying that road crash has grown as public health and economic issue.

Safety and Mobility (Cont.)

There is actually reluctance to accept safety measures when compromising mobility.

Safety in conflict with mobility

The followings are some examples of conflict between safety and mobility:

Speed Limits Motorcycle helmets Land Use Planning (e.g. Location and size of

shopping centers)

Street Layouts which restrict access

Safety in conflict with mobility(Cont.)

Minimum age to get a driver license Restriction on novice drivers ( Alcohol and

Night time driving)

Graduated driver licenses Road humps and other traffic calming

measures Fully controlled turn phases at traffic

signals

Safety in no conflict with mobility

When safety is not in conflict with mobility it is easier for acceptance unless encounter with oppositions regarding cost and inconvenience.

Some safety measures may not have been adopted since travelers perceive very low level of risk.

Safety in no conflict with mobility (Cont.)

The following are some safety measure examples which are not in conflict with mobility:

Airbags Seat Belts Vehicle Safety Improvements Safer Highway Furniture (e.g. safer utility poles)

Improved Emergency Services Passenger Facing Rewards

Future Objectives of Safety and Mobility

The effort for the future is to use the advanced technologies which can enhance safety and mobility simultaneously.

Safety measures provided by emerging technologies will likely be readily accepted if provided at reasonable cost.

Future of Safety

The following are some examples of the future safety measures:

Fatigue Detectors Night time Vision Enhancement Smart Car that Drive Itself On-Board Navigation System

Safety Goal It is a big tension on transportation

professionals to give importance to either safety or mobility.

The goal is to promote both safety and mobility simultaneously.

In fact having safety and mobility at the same time is not always possible.

Transportation Engineers

Ezra Hauer Suggested that:

“Perhaps we transportation engineers can not act in good faith as the custodian of traffic safety because the goal of safety and efficiency are too often in conflict”

He also emphasize the engineer’s responsibility about safety and concludes:“Within limits, highway traffic engineers can make roads safer or less safe so we must know the safety reprecautions of our choices”

Conclusion The road trauma is an important economic and public

health problem in industrial and developing societies.

Suffering from road crashes is perceived differently from social and personal point of views.

From societal viewpoints, there are very important economic and humanitarian reasons to consider this problems seriously.

From personal point of view, there is a very small risk of being in a traffic crash. Therefore safety measures are not as important as mobility objectives from personal point of view.

Acknowledgements

K.W. Ogden. Safer Roads: A Guide to Road Safety Engineering. Institute of Transport Studies, Department of Civil Engineering, Monash University. Melbourne, Australia