Handbook of Road Safety Measures

Many studies have shown that there are many factors that can be chosen as risk factors that increase the probability of accidents to occur and their severity. The correlation between any factor and road accidents means that they both increase and decrease simultaneously. For example, if an increase in speed causes an increase in road accidents it means both are correlated. The degree of such a correlation differs from factor to factor and is usually measured by using different statistical techniques and it ranges from zero to one. If one, it means the factor is highly correlated to road accidents and if zero there is no correlation at all. In this section I will not discuss these techniques in detail, but instead I focus on the results from several sources have been reviewed. I have tried to select recent studies demonstrating long international experience in this field. For example, the Handbook of Road Safety Measures (Elvik Vaa, 2004) provides a wide literature survey and meta-analysis of different road safety measures made in relation to accidents in different countries. I will provide a summary of the most important factors in relation to risk, exposure and consequences at the end of this section. However, I know that it is hard to identify all those macro-factors that have the potential to contribute to accident occurrence and consequences. In all approaches, the chosen factors should be relevant to the concept of road safety that one is seeking to measure. 

Elvik, R., Vaa, T., (2004). The Handbook of Road Safety Measures. Elsevier... 

Books such as the Handbook of Road Safety Measures (Elvik and Vaa, 2004) a Norwegian publication with over 100 road safety measures documented and references to more than 1700 evaluation studies. 

Elvik R and Vaa T (2004) Handbook of Road Safety Measures. Emerald Group Publishing, Bingley, UK. 

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