A great deal of effort is still needed to improve road safety in Europe. Criteria were formulated which can be used to determine whether there is sufficient need for government intervention in traffic and road safety. Evaluation tools were developed to determine the optimum size of the total government budget for road safety policy and to find out how a given budget can be optimally employed in drawing up a package of measures. To apply a social cost-benefit analysis, information is needed to quantify all the effects and put a monetary value to each. A portion of this information is also needed for a cost-effectiveness analysis. In practice, not all the necessary information will usually be available, so the optimum size of the road safety budget and/or the optimum composition of a package of measures cannot be determined using these methods.
Abstract