A guiding principle of modern traffic safety professionals attempting to reduce the risks associated with traffic is to holistically address traffic safety as a multidisciplinary partnership issue. The systems approach focuses on the relationships and dependencies between the various elements of the traffic system. The C3-R3 Systems Approach to traffic safety is introduced; the building blocks of the C3-R3 approach are three entities (the road user, the vehicle, and the road environment), three precrash timeline phases (creation, cultivation, and conduct), and three postcrash timeline phases (response, recovery, and reflection). This approach is proposed as a framework for multidisciplinary traffic safety professionals to research traffic safety issues in an integrated, systematic manner. The C3-R3 approach provides an enhanced systematic framework that more clearly identifies the stages at which traffic safety professionals can intervene to promote road safety. The graphical representation of the C3-R3 system, as presented, emphasizes the convergence of the entities as the timeline proceeds toward a crash event and their subsequent redivergence in the postcrash timeline. Every combination of entity and timeline phase represents a cell in the C3-R3 system; the contents of each cell represent the individual elements that traffic safety professionals need to focus on and understand in order to reduce the crash risk. The C3-R3 Systems Approach represents a starting point to encapsulate the systems approach concepts in traffic safety. It is expected that as more professionals adopt systems thinking, the C3-R3 approach will continue to evolve, expand, and improve.
Abstract