An exploration of road safety parameters in Belarus and the European Union (original) (raw)

Analyzing road safety indicator data across Europe: describing, explaining and comparing

Road safety is a relevant theme receiving increasing attention worldwide. Due to the various factors that influence the road safety level in a country, it is a complex topic to study. The use of indicators describing a particular aspect in an understandable way is valuable in this respect. Consequently, a diverse set of road safety related indicators (including road safety outcome indicators, transport indicators, demographic indicators, etc) is formulated in this study and data are collected for a large set of European countries. Next, this indicator set is analysed to develop the profile of a country, to compare the road safety performance between countries and to assess the explanatory power of the different indicators in terms of the number of road fatalities per million inhabitants. For each country, the aspects on which it performs (relatively) well and the aspects deserving further attention can be revealed. This is illustrated for Belgium in this paper. Moreover, countries with a similar (e.g. road safety outcome or transport) performance can be grouped. Finally, insight into the most determinant indicators for the number of road fatalities per million inhabitants offers useful information.

Road safety performance indicators and their explanatory value: A critical view based on the experience of Central European countries

Safety Science, 2010

Counts of road crashes and their victims represent essential information for road safety practitioners allowing them to analyse their spatial and temporal aspects. However, they cannot provide details on the factors causing road crashes. As a result, various road safety performance indicators (RSPIs) were introduced, making it possible to gather information on the effectiveness of interventions on road safety in given areas. However, analysis of the trends in road casualties in several Central European countries based on safety performance (measured by RSPIs) suggest that not even these indicators can provide full understanding of road safety trends, and, if they are applied generally without the required background information, this could even lead to serious misinterpretation of the trends in road casualties. Sudden breaks in long-term trends seem to be linked to the transition process and to certain legislative reforms. The exposure and socio-economic climate appear to have had a major impact on road crash outcomes. Various additional indicators describing organisational and structural aspects may be helpful, therefore, in better understanding and predicting the development in road safety for individual countries.

IDENTYFICATION AND COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF FACTORS INFLUENCING ROAD SAFETY IN US REGIONS AND IN POLISH VOIVODESHIPS

Analyses of road safety at national level have been run for many years and large number of publications concerning them appeared so far. How interdisciplinary the issue is, has been shown by literature studies done by the author of the paper. It appears that economists, mathematicians, doctors as well as engineers have studied the issue. It is not an easy one, as results of many analyses lead to conflicting conclusions and often fail to provide straightforward answers to questions asked. The administrative actions taken to improve road safety, uniform for the whole country, frequently fail to give expected results, including Poland’s case. Therefore there is a need to analyse what makes some provinces, and not the others, report improvement in road safety. This paper presents part of the work on author’s doctoral thesis, which analyses how regional characteristics may impact road safety in respective regions. However, during collection of data for the purpose of the doctoral thesis it turned out that many variables mentioned in literature as significant had not been collected on regional level in Europe, including Poland. There are, though, available data on respective American states, so the search for the best describing independent variables was started from the analyses of US data. The analyses showed the impact of factors such as annual income per capita, transport activity, density of population, seatbelt rates, road and vehicle density, rate of doctors.

Benchmarking road safety performances of countries

Safety Science, 2010

In order to obtain political interest in road safety problems and to learn from other countries' 'good practices', it is often helpful to compare one's own safety situation with that of other countries. In a number of projects tools have been developed for such comparisons. These tools range from simple ratings of countries on their safety outcomes, such as the annual number of fatalities per capita or per kilometre driven by (motor)vehicles to more comprehensive comparisons. These comparisons not only show differences in safety between countries, but to a certain extent also explain such differences in terms of their safety background and measures taken. Finally, tools have been defined to support road safety policy makers in developing possible safety measures or actions. Procedures for such complex safety comparisons have been developed and tested in several so-called SUNflower studies. This promising approach can be further developed into standard procedures for safety comparisons between all countries in the European Union, and other countries worldwide. This paper wishes to outline the development of such standards for the benchmarking of road safety and safety trends as well as procedures for quantifying safety performances of countries. Starting point of this conceptual framework is the so-called SUNflower-pyramid in which three types of indicators are distinguished. The first one of these, the road safety performance indicator, is called an outcome indicator and is based on the number of killed and injured road users. The second indicator type indicates the quality of the implementation of road safety policies: the implementation performance indicators. The third type of indicator indicates the quality of response in policy documents to improve road safety (policy performance indicator). The three types of indicators are embedded in a policy context: the structure and culture of a country, which are considered as background variables. This paper sets out to describe the framework for the development of a comprehensive set of indicators to benchmark road safety performances of countries or of sub-national jurisdictions. The paper also discusses the advantages and disadvantages of combining such indicators and if combined, how to aggregate how different indicators in one composite performance index. It is argued to group countries in different classes with more or less comparable countries. Different procedures are used for this grouping. The results are promising and it is recommended to work with classes of countries.

Road Safety in South-East European Regions

South-East European (SEE) countries are among the “worst road safety performers in Europe” based on road fatalities per population. The objective of this paper is the comprehensive presentation of the current road safety conditions in SEE as recorded within the EU co-funded project “ROSEE-ROad safety in South-East European regions”. Basic road safety trends, the assessment of road safety legislation, policy and institutional capacity and of needs and availability of road safety data and information in the project partner countries are recorded. Key issues on road infrastructure and road users’ behaviour are also explored and road safety priorities are set. This analysis provides a better understanding of the current road safety situation in SEE countries. Despite the great differences in road safety management, road network conditions, road user behaviour, social and economic background, legislation, enforcement etc, several common road safety problems exist and common priorities ar...

Road Safety Status in Top 20 Economies of the World

Almost 3400 person dies every day in the world. Fatalities due to road accidents will be in the third place among top ten causes of deaths in the world by 2020. Major road development program has been introduced in the past to make transport faster but the road safety issues are not tackled satisfactorily by the nations. This article is based on the global status report on road safety 2015 by W.H.O. Road safety scenario is compared of the top 20 economies of the world on the basis of different parameters such as fatalities among different road users, vehicle standards, road safety funding, implementation of road safety laws, and fatalities by alcohol. It is found that middle-income economies have 82% contribution to fatalities. High-income economies have a number of fatalities by Drink and Drive and are more dangerous for 4-wheeler road users. Middle-income economies are more dangerous for 2-wheelers and pedestrians.

Road safety implications and opportunities for regions under increasing motorization

2016

This paper compiles, evaluates and analyses information from different data sources on accidents and health, road transport and economic performance in a comprehensive manner to assess the size and impact of road accidents and injuries in regions under increasing motorization. Strategies based on global road safety improvement experiences are presented. In addition the paper aims at discussing a way forward by indicating opportunities and countermeasures that could be implemented to achieve a new level of safety in these regions. The data used comes from e.g. World Health Organization (WHO) and World Bank. Estimations on costs due to road transport injuries are presented. The results clearly demonstrate that road safety is causing large problems and costs with an enormous impact on the wellbeing of people, economy and productivity. For example, according to our analysis, the loss to the economy in Latin America is more than 130 billion US$ or 2.8 % of GDP. In many of low and middle-...

An Exploration of Road Safety Parameters in Greece and Turkey

JOURNAL OF TRANSPORT AND SHIPPING, 2007

Abstract. Given that several regions of Greece and Turkey have higher road accident death rates than any other European region, the objective of this research is the exploration of the underline parameters, which contribute to this phenomenon. On that purpose, road accident fatalities are co-examined with basic macroscopic parameters affecting road safety, like population and vehicle fleet and lognormal models are developed for Greece, Turkey and three selected groups of EU countries. The application of the models developed showed ...