Traffic safety environment

Traffic safety environments include such factors as time of day, weather conditions, pavement conditions, and other factors. Based on travel rates, accidents occur more frequently at night. Drivers may have greater fatigue at night. The proportion of drivers who have been drinking is higher. 

Verster JC, Mets MA (2009) Psychoactive medication and traffic safety. Int J Environ Res Public Health 6 1041-1054... 

Melvin, J.W. and Weber, K. (Eds.), Review of Biomechanical Response and Injury in the Automotive Environment, AATD Task B Final Report, DOT-HS-807-224, US Department of Transportation, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Washington, DC, 1988. 

Shinar, D. (2001). Traffic sign comprehension by young and old drivers in naturalistic environments. Proceedings of the Traffic Safety in Three Continents conference, September 19-21. Moscow, Russia. 

All of these changes occurred because of two significant evolutionary processes. The first is the introduction of intelligent transportation systems (ITS) in the form of interactive in-vehicle and infrastructure based systems that alert the driver to dangerous conditions and to the status of his or her own vehicle. The second is the expansion of the environment beyond the immediate roadway and its structures to include the prevailing culture, and even the impact of alternative modes of transportation and organizational climate within which safety is treated. The rest of this chapter is devoted to a discussion of safety measures that seem to be effective in improving traffic safety in each of the newly expanded domains listed in the modified Haddon Matrix. 

This development is rational and reduces the mental load of the driving tasks. From the point of view of traffic safety, it is important to direct the development of skills in a direction that promotes safety. It is also important to design the traffic environment in a way that takes the needs of the novice driver as well as the experienced driver into account. The novice driver should be given a realistic understanding of the challenges that the traffic environment represents. Simultaneously, the attention of the experienced driver should be directed at recent changes in the traffic environment. 

Research early focused on the possibility to identify accident-prone drivers, i.e. drivers who due to certain personal characteristics were more likely to be involved in traffic accidents than others. The aim was to improve traffic safety by identifying such individuals, e.g. by use of psychological tests, and excluding them from the traffic environment. Accident statistics showed that some drivers experienced more accidents than others. Although this so-called accident-proneness theory is often accepted as credible by the layman, it has been criticised by the research community for several reasons and is today of little practical significance (McKennan, 1983). The critique may be summarised as follows ... 

Table 28.2 Performance indicators for different traffic-safety areas. Detailed performance measures have not been defined for the traffic environment...

The FHWA acknowledges the interrelated system of vehicle, hiunan and roadway environment in their general discussion of traffic safety. See U. S. Department of Transportation. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Federal Highway Administration. Midway Safety 84. A Report on Activities Under the Highway Safety Act of 1966.1986, page 68. The fact that two administrations vduch deal with traffic safety are located in the same Department and use incompatible approaches is an example of nonmarket failure. 

The pioneering work of the public health specialist William Haddon Jr. brought the epidemiological discipline of host, agent, and environment and the time frames of before, during, and after the crash to the search for preventive measures in traffic safety, and the Haddon matrix revolutionised the way traffic safety professionals thought about both causes and interventions. An example is depicted in Table 5.1 of ways in which measures to help prevent—or minimise injury in—single-vehicle run-off-road crashes into fixed objects. Only one of the several potential measures in each box of the matrix is shown. Once all potential measures were conceived in a... 

It is a key challenge for every traffic safety agency to establish a deep understanding of the critical factors in the road and traffic environment, vehicles and travel speeds that lead to the four most prevalent serious injury crash types. Then the challenge over time is to implement innovative and appropriate measures to take advantage of the opportunities to reduce kinetic energy exchange when crashes do occur. 

For decades in the United States, deaths of drivers and passengers in motor vehicle crashes were considered to he one of the nation s most serious public health problems. Traffic safety specialists defined the problem in terms of accident prevention rather than loss reduction. They spoke in terms of a need to prevent accidents rather than a need to reduce losses from accidents. In so doing, they presupposed the problem solution and focused their attention exclusively on driver behavior. Predictably, their solution to the problem was driver education, traffic enforcement, and Drive Safely campaigns. They overlooked possible benefits from more crashworthy vehicles and a safer roadway environment. 

Luna TD. Air traffic controller shiftwork What are the implications for aviation safety A review. Aviat, Space Environ Med 1997 68 69-79. 

Convinced that illegal traffic in toxic and dangerous products and wastes poses a severe threat to the environment and to human health and safety. 

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