Decision making about road safety in the National Traffic and Transport Plan; The participation phase, the cabinet's position and the parliamentary debate. This study examines whether the decision making about the National Traffic and Transport Plan has resulted in a decisive road safety policy and which conditions contributed to this process. What is meant by a decisive road safety policy is an effective one (that achieves its goals), an efficient one (in which the benefits of measures are greater than the costs) and moreover that it is ambitious (in its targets, its implementation budget and period). This report studies the final phase of the decision making process from October 2000 to April 2002 in which the participation, the forming of the cabinet's position and the parliamentary debate took place. The cabinet's position in the National Traffic and Transport Plan's road safety policy was almost effective, was efficient, but not ambitious (in its three criteria: target, implementation period, and available budget). The policy is therefore judged to be almost decisive. This phase of the decision making was characterized by fine tuning the texts concerning the policy intentions. Although there was room for participation by and involvement of various organizations, the Ministry of Transport already knew most of their positions well because of the long history of the process, with the result that the participation hardly resulted in new texts. The Ministry of Transport's civil servants, the Minister of Transport and the cabinet had a decisive influence on changes in the texts. In addition, the Ministry commissioned several studies and their findings were used in the texts of the cabinet's position.
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