A brief outline is presented of the Netherlands project Incentive System for Road Safety in Road Haulage. The road haulage sector is relatively often involved in road accidents. Instead of (more traditional) measures aimed at improving the infrastructure, the vehicle or the capacity of the driver, this project aims to introduce a safety culture in road haulage companies by providing certain incentives to road haulage companies. These incentives are to be created by the manager of the road infrastructure (road managers), e.g. access to dedicated infrastructure, and are aimed at improving the accessibility of the road haulage sector. A trade-off is sought between incentives to the road haulage sector (accessibility) and improved road safety through road hauliers that have incorporated safety culture in their organizations. Currently, the philosophy of the incentive system is piloted in five regions in the Netherlands. A parallel process of research aimed at establishing insight in safety culture was started and is still ongoing. The aim of the incentive system is to reduce the amount of traffic casualties by focusing on the human factor and road haulage companies involved. The Incentive System tries to stimulate an awareness of traffic safety in the entire flow of goods, thus leading to measures in the entire traffic system, i.e. introduce safety culture in the companies. For example a road manager can allow the transporters to use dedicated infrastructure, such as bus-lanes. In return the transporter has to incorporate safety culture in its organisation. By synthesising the results of the five pilot regions (which are selected to provide a geographical balance), steps towards creating a nationwide system can be taken. The results of the trial indicated that while safety culture is profitable at the Society level, it is only partially profitable at the Company level and that incentives are therefore worthwhile. For the covering abstract see ITRD E126595.
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