Public policy, road safety

Many countries need to compare their own achievements and progress in road safety with other countries, where the awareness of the problem by public and policy makers is not enough. The problem itself is underestimated in many countries, especially in developing countries where the issue is challenging. The progress in any country will be minimum unless the country has good and standard measurement to rely on comparisons and problem formulation. Briefly, the main purposes of this new approach are as follows ... 

The government s transport policy is to encourage walking, cycling and public transport, particularly for shorter urban trips. This could have a significant short- and medium-term effect on accidents, and should be considered by Road Safety Auditors when looking at schemes. 

When public policy is to attract travellers off roads, the safety of rail travel must be firmly based on robust and impartial regulatory systems. This is particularly important when the fragmentation of the railway has led to a host of new companies, contractors, sub-contractors and individuals working on the railway, some of whom have little or no railway experience, (quoted in Uff, 2000 169)... 

What makes the road safety policy area special is that it is multi-level (different governmental levels are involved), multi-actor (many different stakeholders can contribute public, private, and the civic sector) and multi-sector (not only the road safety sector, but also road safety as a facet of other policy areas). This makes... 

A final similarity between the two strategies is the political support that is given. This was manifest by the passing of a political decision within the Swedish Parliament, while in the Netherlands, a Parliamentary majority influenced the then Minister of Transport to use a SWOV publication (Koomstra et al, 1992) Towards sustainable safe road traffic as the starting point for her road safety policy. 

Do not postpone remedial action until a crash has happened, but act proactively. Reactive road safety policy only works if crashes have already occurred. Proactive policy sets out to prevent crashes before they occur by adapting circumstances in such a way that the risk of serious crashes is eliminated or strongly reduced. Sometimes this is a difficult step for (political) decision makers—spending public budgets on adapting an environment where no crashes have recently occurred. Such decisions require much more, and more effective, explanation than measures implemented at locations where serious crashes have happened. In health care policy, a similar finding exists. In that sector, for financial reasons it is commonplace for preventive policy to be of the utmost importance (in addition to the importance of curative policy). 

It is important to underline that there is no implied criticism of the approach in the United States in this analysis. The objective is simply to demonstrate that both traffic safety policy and practice in any society are intimately linked with the prevailing road use culture. What we seek is a new level of understanding of how road use culture operates to determine progress. Armed with a deeper understanding, each nation will be in a position to make its own public policy decisions in a more informed way. 

Traffic safety is an unintended consequence of road transport, and it behoves us to understand the context in which traffic safety is considered a public policy issue. There are five organising ideas that influence the development of national transport policy ... 

What is striking here is that one person (the minister) effectively delayed these safety measures for some 3 years. The presumed concerns about public acceptability were shown to be unfounded. So often, when change is proposed, governments (and certainly individual politicians) are well behind the evolution of public opinion. This is often the lot of innovative policy in the road safety field. 

Belin, M. Public road safety policy change and its implementation—Vision Zero, a road safety policy innovation. 2012, Karohnska University, Sweden. 

ANSl/ASSE Z15.1 provides organizations with a guidance document to assist with the development of policies and procedures necessary to control risks related to the operation of motor vehicles. The standard applies to the operation of organization-owned or organization-leased vehicles on public roads. Motor vehicle practices and operations play a vital role on the effectiveness of any overall safety and health management function. The new publication places added emphasis... 

In Chapter 6 we lauded the evolution of Safe System as the conceptual approach underpinning the development of modem traffic safety strategies. We also noted a persistent gap between knowledge of Safe System principles at the political and bureaucratic level and the acceptance of their implications for policy and practice. We speculated that the apparently high costs of implementation and the need to accept public accountability for outcomes make road trauma an inconvenient truth for governments throughout much of the Western motorised world. 

---