Road safety can be assessed in terms of the social costs of crashes and injuries. However, simply counting crashes or injuries is an imperfect indicator of the level of road safety. When crashes occur it is the “worst case scenario” of insecure operational conditions of road traffic. Work Package 3 of SafetyNet deals with Safety Performance Indicators (SPIs). A Safety Performance Indicator is any variable, which is used in addition to the figures of crashes or injuries to measure changes in the operational conditions of road traffic.
SPIs can give a more complete picture of the level of road safety and can detect the emergence of problems at an early stage, before these problems result in crashes. They use qualitative and quantitative information to help determine a road safety programmes’ success in achieving its objectives.
Goal
One of the main goals of SafetyNet WP3 is to develop a uniform methodology for measuring a coherent set of safety performance indicators in each of the 25 Member States and some non-EU Members. This report provides the first ideas from the WP3 team on this subject.
The SafetyNet team will move on to the other goals (offering technical assistance to some Member States that fail in producing the SPI data according to the developed uniform methodology & collecting current data on SPIs that meet the standards of the uniform methodology) at a later stage in the project.
Research areas
Work Package 3 of SafetyNet investigates SPIs in seven different road safety areas.
- Alcohol & Drug use
- Speeds
- Protective systems
- Daytime Running Lights
- Vehicles
- Roads
- Trauma management
State of the art report
This report starts off with a description of the general methodology. Then, the report describes the state of the art in the seven research areas. Firstly, the theoretical backgrounds of each research area are given. Secondly, the first results from the questionnaire (that was sent to 27 countries: the 25 EU Member States, plus Switzerland and Norway) are presented. And thirdly, the first ideas on the details of the SPIs that could be used in the future are described.
Summary Task 3: Protective systems (Chapter 6)
The human body is vulnerable and, during crashes, is exposed to immense forces leading to injury or death. Here, the protective systems available for all traffic participants (airbags and safety belts) play a very important role in protecting the most vulnerable parts of the human body. Availability and appropriate use of protective systems are therefore fundamental items in developing this SPI.
The rates of protective systems use vary significantly with age, sex and other socio-economical characteristics of their users. These argue for treating different road users group in order to understand the problem better and find out the general rate for the whole population. Moreover, subdividing wearing rates is important for the target group concerning information and education, and enforcement activities.
Based on current practices, a set of Safety Performance Indicators has been proposed. The indicators for task 3 are the wearing and usage rates of protective systems by road users in road traffic. As the importance of particular devices derives mostly from their safety potential at national and European level, they may vary significantly among each other. The choice of the appropriate ones should be based on sophisticated research knowledge and not only on the accessibility and measurability.
The total number of chosen SPIs might be further reconsidered, as it’s quite high and requires a broad knowledge of the traffic situation and detailed survey information, which might recently not have been available for many countries.
