Traffic safety managers are constantly faced with the problem of making decisions on which, and of these the "best", measures and countermeasures to implement for addressing their main goal - improving road safety. The ability to make these decisions effectively is dependent upon the availability of suitable and contemporary research information on the incidence of travel and accidents occurring on our roads and highways. To this end an area crucial to traffic safety research is the development of evaluation methods for measuring and subsequently identifying "high risk travel patterns". This component of the countermeasure development process is difficult to pursue since the overall risk of accident occurrence is directly affected by the joint interactive effects of numerous human, vehicle, road/infrastructure, environment, trip and temporal travel pattern risk levels existing within the transportation system. Other factors (e.g., countermeasure programs, economic conditions, vehicle/driver regulations, social factors) also influence the prevailing risk levels, at any given time, for road system users. This report discusses various aspects of an exposure (to risk) data collection system that forms the basis for developing a "risk analysis system" in order to measure and monitor road travel incident risks. Specifically, the relationships among causal factors, risk levels and incidence of accidents, injuries and fatalities are presented. The conceptual concepts of a "risk analysis system" process for measuring, monitoring and improving road safety are described. The `key' information requirements to be considered within the framework of an exposure (to risk) data collection system are identified. A variety of methods are available from collecting exposure (to risk) information - these are discussed along with factors to be considered in their implementation. The applications and uses of exposure (to risk) information towards the main objective of making road travel `safer' are also discussed. The report concludes with a discussion of the 1978-1979 National Exposure (To Risk) Driving Survey - the other effort, to date, to collect national exposure (to risk) data, and offers some conclusions and recommendations related to the development and implementation of a 'risk analysis system' for measuring and monitoring the levels of risk on Canada's roads and highways. (Author/publisher)
Abstract