The transportation community has begun to recognize the need for comprehensive performance measures for traffic safety. Using a single crash rate inevitably neglects other aspects of traffic safety. This study proposed a traffic safety index combining three dimensions of traffic safety (fatality, injury, and crash) from two perspectives (person and road) and applied the index to project a comprehensive traffic safety picture of Korea. The proposed index employed the approach used for Human Development Index of United Nations, and its confidence interval was estimated based on moving variance. The proposed index and its confidence interval were shown to be useful in evaluating overall safety performance of the entire nation over time. The index can be tied with a macro-level safety plan or policy in setting a goal, and it is not limited to Korea but is applicable to any nation or large area as long as valid historical safety data have been maintained.
Abstract