The main goal of this study was to estimate the effect on road safety if lorries would be replaced by delivery vans for trips made within built-up areas. It had been noted that adequate exposure data, especially for trips within built-up areas, was missing. For this reason, carrying out the calculations of the effects on road safety had to be based on certain assumptions. These assumptions were used to establish the idea that replacing lorries by delivery vans would have a negative effect on road safety. The extent of this effect would increase in proportion to the degree to which the lorries would be replaced by delivery vans. Although the replacement of lorries by delivery vans would mean a decrease only in the number of fatalities (and this decrease would be slight), there would be a sharp increase in all other separate categories of the severity of injuries. The general conclusion was that a shift from using lorries to using delivery vans for transport inside built-up areas should be assessed negatively in consideration of both accidents and (be it a cautious conclusion) behaviour.
Abstract