Many European countries have set ambitious targets for reducing the number of road accident fatalities. The European Union has a target of reducing the number of road accident fatalities from 40,000 in 2000 to 20,000 in 2010. In order to realise these targets, it is necessary to implement effective road safety measures. Formal efficiency assessment tools can help policy makers to identify the most cost-effective road safety measures. Previous research has shown that road safety can be improved by basing policy priorities on formal efficiency assessment tools (Elvik 2003). Moreover, research has shown that actual policy priorities are not always very much influenced by formal efficiency assessment (Elvik 1995, 2001, Fridstrøm and Elvik 1997, Nyborg 1998, Odeck 1996). The objective of this report is to try to identify some barriers that may prevent the use of efficiency assessment tools in road safety policy. The report will assess the use of efficiency assessment tools primarily at the administrative level. Work Package 2 of the Thematic Network ROSEBUD provides information, from Partner countries, about current road safety policy, the use of formal efficiency assessment tools for setting priorities for road safety measures, reasons why formal efficiency assessment tools are not used as an element of road safety policy, and assessing the relative importance of various barriers to the use of efficiency assessment tools. A survey of decision makers constituted the main procedure designed to shed light on these issues. A distinction has been made between barriers to the use of EAT (either fundamental, institutional and technical barriers) and barriers to the implementation of policies that have been found to be efficient according to CBA or CEA (that politicians either plainly disregard these results or make priorities in dissonance with these results). Another important distinction is between absolute and relative barriers. Absolute barriers are barriers that cannot be removed as a result of the Thematic Network ROSEBUD. These barriers are primarily fundamental and some institutional barriers related to the use of EAT in planning, in addition to the barriers to the implementation. Relative barriers are those that the ROSEBUD project can attempt influence, consisting primarily of technical and some of the institutional barriers related to the use of EAT. (Author/publisher) For the official ROSEBUD website see http://partnet.vtt.fi/rosebud/
Abstract