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Four-year programme 1999-2002

The research programme 1999-2002 was divided into eight research themes that cover the most important aspects of road safety. They were:

Road Users: the relationship between behaviour, surroundings, and accidents

Preconditions for safe behaviour

The strategy for a safe road infrastructure

Road design and road safety

Vehicle safety

Telematics and road safety

Road safety analysis

Decision making and administration

 

Road Users: the relationship between behaviour, surroundings, and accidents

There were three different aspects in this theme.

In the first place, research was carried out that was aimed at gaining a greater insight into the possibilities of influencing traffic behaviour by the traffic surroundings.

The second aspect was research into the influence of the emotional and mental state of road users on their behaviour. Part of this study is international and continued during 2003.

Finally, a study took place of which traffic behaviour leads to crashes. Special attention was paid to the question of how behavioural causes of crashes can be studied

Preconditions for safe behaviour

What road users do within their possibilities and limitations partly determines the road safety level, no matter how safe the traffic surroundings are made. This theme was aimed at the road user: what must he/she know, be able to do and want to do, and how can this be influenced? How does someone learn to drive a moped or a car, when does someone have sufficient knowledge and skills to do it without having a crash, and how does one ensure that somebody is also prepared to behave in such a way that his/her own safety and that of others are not jeopardized? To answer these questions was the goal of this part of the theme.

The strategy for a safe road infrastructure

This research was aimed at the relations between function, layout, and use of the various levels of the traffic and transport plans. When making decisions about traffic and transport policy in which structural changes are involved, it is important that the road safety consequences are taken into account. The discussion should not be limited to the economic value and other aspects, such as accessibility and the environment. Special attention was paid to sustainably-safe solutions.

Road design and road safety

This was aimed at the level of the design of the traffic infrastructure. At this level, the engineering design stands central. This is (partly) because of the efforts of the designer. The goal was to develop scientifically founded knowledge about the safety level of the engineering design and to make this information available, in a user-friendly way, to road designers, drafters of road design guidelines and recommendations, and education organizations.

In the first place, the safety aspects of traffic provisions were studied.

In the second place, the further development of qualitative and quantitative instruments for determining the road safety effects of a traffic-engineering design was studied.

Vehicle safety

Central here was the incompatibility and inequality of the various road users, and their consequences for crashes and injury. In this, long-lasting injury got special attention because little is known about them, even though a traffic casualty's life can be strongly influenced by it. An important aim was to reduce the consequences of such inequality between road users.

Telematics and road safety

The possibilities and effects of telematics were brought into picture here. An attempt was made to estimate the effects of telematics applications on road safety and to indicate the criteria why certain applications did or did not warrant support. These criteria were reasoned from the position of the road user as well as that of the policy maker. From the policy maker's position, more was examined than only road safety.

Road safety analysis

This was aimed at enlarging the insight in the road safety developments. In order to formulate realistic targets it is necessary to describe road safety developments. This involved looking at the most important influence factors, such as traffic and its distribution among the various modes of transport, the demographic and economic developments, and the effects of road safety measures. On the one hand, this description is necessary to follow the developments and to signal unexpected tendencies as quickly as possible and, on the other hand, to use these developments as a reference for evaluating measures taken.

 

Decision-making and administration

This theme contained two parts.

 

Managerial research

This was aimed at the question of how planning and decision making takes place, and the role played by knowledge. The way in which and the moments that knowledge can best be offered, was also studied.

 

Economic research

The purpose of this was to obtain knowledge that can be used in rational decision-making. Among other things, this involved making an estimate of road safety costs and the cost-effectiveness or cost-benefit ratios of measures.

 

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