The elements of a rational analysis of road safety problems depend to some extent on the level of analysis and on its objectives. Road safety problems can be analysed at the international level, the national level, or regional or local levels of government. The recently published world report on road traffic injury prevention provides an example of an analysis of road safety at the global level. The objective of the report is to heighten awareness of traffic injury, thereby creating stronger incentives for effective road safety programmes. This paper will focus on the analysis of road safety problems at the national level of government, for the purpose of developing a long-term road safety programme. It will be assumed that the analysis of road safety problems has an applied objective: to understand in order to prevent, and not merely to satisfy intellectual curiosity. The objective of the paper is to show by means of examples how a rational analysis of road safety problems can be performed. Several attempts have been made to produce a taxonomy of road safety problems, i.e. to develop typologies of problems and their elements. The Haddon Matrix, for example classifies road safety phenomena according to when they occur, (pre-crash, crash or post crash) and primary contributing factors (human, vehicle and equipment, environment). For the covering abstract see ITRD E136183.
Samenvatting