The Australian experience with road safety policy and traffic enforcement: Actions speak louder than words (original) (raw)

The Safe System and traffic enforcement – Interfacing road safety and traffic policing

This paper looks to the future to consider where traffic enforcement practice will be in the decades to come, and discusses current enforcement practices in order to highlight those that are most effective based on experience and practice. Traffic policing is about detection and deterrence, guidance, and persuasion, to ensure safe and legal road behaviours. Traffic policing is no longer the singular province of policing forces, for example, in the Australian State of New South Wales, with a single statewide police agency, there are now eleven separate public sector agencies and private sector organisations responsible for different aspects of traffic policing and traffic enforcement can be described as an uncoupled system. The co-ordination of strategic directions for enforcement is thus difficult, and there is a need to optimise intelligence-led traffic policing to serve as an interface between road safety and traffic enforcement. The areas of traffic policing that are discussed in...

Re: Improving Road Safety through Deterrence-Based Initiatives

Sultan Qaboos University medical journal, 2011

The review paper by Jeremy D. Davey and James E. Freeman on Improving Road Safety through Deterrence-Based Initiatives, published in SQUMJ in February 2011, is an interesting discussion and overview of this important topic. 1 The clarity of the presentation and the balanced view provided by the authors add much value to the paper. In addition, stressing the aspects of culture and cultural change in relation to road safety practices is of particular importance. As asserted by the authors, the deterrence-based approach is not the magic panacea for road traffic accidents, nor does it provide lasting behavioural changes. Despite the theoretical appeal of deterrence as a control measure for the performance of the drivers, evidence shows repeatedly that legislation and deterrencebased approaches to change behavior of road users produce weak, marginal or transient results. 2,3,4 Studies over several decades have shown inconsistent results. It appears that what is more potentially important in this context than deterrence-based legislations is a deeper understanding of required changes in the social atmosphere. 5 Successful law enforcement is based on its capacity to build an effective deterrent peril to road users and its appeal to the culture. In this letter, we would like to share with you a basic analysis of the offences and crashes data reported by the Royal Oman Police (ROP) in the last 10 years, viz. 2000 to 2009. 6 In the year 2000, ROP ticketed around 230,000 offences which is equivalent to around a half offence per registered vehicle during that year. By 2009, the number of offences had increased almost eight-fold exceeding 1,800,000 offences with around 2.5 offences per vehicle. During all those years, Omani male drivers were responsible for more than 90% of all offences. If we focus on speeding, which is the highly cited cause of death from road traffic incidents (RTI) in Oman and elsewhere, 7-9 we see that speeding related offences as a percentage of all traffic offences have increased from around 32% in 2000 to over 85% in 2009. At the same time, the number of crashes attributed to speeding increased from 39% to around 51% during the same period. Elsewhere, longitudinal research has shown that receiving speeding fines is actually associated with increased risk of getting ensuing speeding tickets. 10 This may indicate that enforcing speeding tickets alone may not be effective. There is, therefore, a need to consider other deterrence strategies that considers the context. Quoting Davey JD and Freeman JE, "the effectiveness of any deterrence-based enforcement practice is heavily dependent upon increasing motorists' perceptions regarding the risk of being apprehended for an offence, e.g., general deterrence". However, the question is what are the perceptions of "risk" and "speeding" of our young drivers? Culturally determined bias is an important factor in the perception of risk and the causes of accidents. 11 As such, it is of paramount importance to address the socio-cultural aspects of accidents. For example, the core component of speed, i.e. time, needs to be considered within the broader social context. Traditional communities, like Oman and other Gulf countries, lived previously in a more relaxed manner as their time was

Towards a holistic framework for road safety in Australia

Journal of Transport Geography, 2008

a b s t r a c t Current road safety programs and thinking in Australia are constructed within a paradigm that tends to accept existing cultural arrangements. Such programs therefore, favour symptomatic solutions and technical and/or physical solutions as a way forward. Fundamental redesign of cultural arrangements is necessary in order to challenge the ''culture of speed". Our research is developing a holistic, social ecological model for reconnecting road safety with communities that value quality of life and slower ways of being. Improving road safety through reduction in the volume and speed of motorised traffic is integrally related to enhancing health and fitness, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and improving neighbourhood planning and community cohesion. In this regard, community-based travel behaviour change initiatives are deserving of much greater attention in the road safety area. As well as these changes at the personal and community scale, policy changes to urban and transport planning that address the broader issues of sustainability in an era of climate change and peak oil can also be linked to improvements in road safety.

The enforcement chain: traffic law enforcement and road safety targets

Contents of the project: The Dutch government has set quantitative targets for road safety. In the short term a structured approach to police surveillance and the creation of an enforcement chain would be conducive to reaching these targets. The creation of a sustainably safe traffic system would be conducive in the long term.

Traffic policing and road safety for individuals and for populations

2012

Traffic policing is about changing driver behaviour through guiding, enforcing and promoting safe road use within the road transport system. Typically, when we think of traffic policing, we think of enforcement alone : the detection, the ticketing, and the penalties. But traffic policing has traditionally been much more than that, partly as a consequence of not having technologies and methods to effectively enforce illegal driver behaviour. Prior to the 1980s and 1990s, interventions with erring drivers were mostly unplanned and arose from observations of an illegal act. Police intervened in person, which allowed for discussion about the illegal behaviour, its causes and consequences, and corrective actions to avoid re-offending. Since then, the availability of enforcement technologies and procedures targeting drink driving, drug driving and speed detection have seen a predominant focus on detection and punishment of drivers on a community-wide basis. As a consequence, traffic polic...

Delivering safer roads: the Roads and Traffic Authority of New South Wales model

2009

The New South Wales (NSW) Government has identified road safety as one of its key State Plan priorities. The Roads and Traffic Authority of New South Wales (RTA) has been nominated as the lead agency for this priority. This presented the RTA with an important opportunity to reduce the State's road toll even further. A new focus was introduced for the RTA to take up the challenges and priorities set by the NSW Government and to provide improved outcomes for communities across the State. RTA's refocus required every facet of its business to take responsibility for road safety and ensure that road safety related capabilities were developed across the spectrum of its business. To achieve this, numerous initiatives, strategies, and actions were developed and implemented across the organisation. Under this new approach, road safety became an important driver for all RTA managers. In order to bring about change, RTA needed to change the processes used in the development of its programs and change some of the systems that support its management. The major impact of these changes was in the way that RTA managed the road network and the infrastructure programs that maintain and develop its network. This paper discusses the processes and systems that were developed or enhanced in the areas of infrastructure management to underpin RTA's delivery of road safety outcomes.

Strategies to advance road safety in Australia

2014

As part of a review of the 2011 Australian National Road Safety Strategy research was undertaken to both assess new developments in road safety, including new and improved countermeasures, and to analyse crash and other data to identify any necessary changes in the priority areas for reducing road trauma. The research consisted of three components; a literature review, stakeholder consultation and data analysis. The literature review included recent publications, national and international strategies and current research in Australia and overseas. Strategies from the most successful road safety countries were of particular interest. The major areas covered were vehicle technologies, vulnerable road users, innovative infrastructure treatments, integration of road safety with other society goals and communication with the community. Consultation was carried out with a range of stakeholders and road safety experts. They were asked to identify significant countermeasures implemented in ...

The future of road safety: A worldwide perspective

IATSS Research

Estimates by the World Health Organization suggest that, on a yearly basis, road crashes kill 1.25 million people-nearly 3400 road fatalities per day-and injure up to 50 million. Traffic injuries are not equally spread over the world, however; some countries are hit harder than others, and the chance of being killed in a road crash depends on where one lives. Almost 90% of all traffic casualties occur in low-and middle-income countries (LMIC). Globally, the number of fatalities per 100,000 population (mortality rate) ranges from less than 3 to almost 40. The rate is less than 9 in high-income countries (HIC) but averages around 20 in LMIC, with the African region demonstrating the highest rate (26.6). While road safety trends have been positive in HIC over the last few decades, trends in LMIC are not telling a positive story: road fatalities are expected to increase to almost 2 million road fatalities per year by 2020. The United Nations has adopted several resolutions on road safety and proposes actions to tackle the global road safety crisis. Considering the current level of road safety to be unacceptable, the UN has taken several initiatives. One effort, the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020, has generated substantial activity around the world over the last couple of years. Furthermore, it is very encouraging that the UN included road safety in the Sustainable Development Goals that it laid out in September 2015. Road safety is part of the public health agenda and the urban development agenda. Measured in "real actions," however, the responses so far from the overall global community and individual countries do not suggest that we are already on the right track to bringing down the death toll on roads. The future of road safety is uncertain and definitely not the same for all regions of the world. Countries with a mature road safety approach and an ambition to make further progress are expected to move in the direction of a pro-active approach: a Safe System approach. It is reported that many LMIC, meanwhile, are on the brink of designing road safety strategies and implementing action plans. The international community is willing to support LMIC, but LMIC cannot simply copy successful HIC strategies because local circumstances differ. The principles of successful HIC strategies are applicable, but the priorities and action plans should take root in and align with local conditions.

Road Safety Within the “Integrated System of Transport Safety”

The concept of the “Integrated System of Transport Safety” in Poland is a novel solution, built upon the best practices available from only a handful of countries in the world. In the last few decades, the extent of applying integrated transport safety systems to improve transport safety systems has varied; nevertheless, studying the experience of the safest countries in the world we can say that enormous progress has been achieved in this respect. Progress includes both social attitudes and system solutions. Both these issues are of critical importance. Firstly, they involve the recognition of human rights to safety. This, however, raises the question of whether these rights to transport safety are actually respected? Practice shows that the execution of this declaration is very difficult and to a significant extent depends on the insistence and awareness of the public. The paper is documenting the three year research project “Integrated System of Transport Safety” commissioned by ...