With this monthly newsletter we wish to draw your attention to new topics on our website. This month in the SWOV newsletter:
SWOV in the media
Publications
Fact sheets
Library
Congresses and meetings

Interview Fred Wegman
The Dutch magazine Auto Kampioen has published an interview with SWOV's managing director Fred Wegman in its May issue. In the interview he gives his opinion about, for instance, the alcolock, speed limits, speed humps, and mobile phone use while driving.

New definition serious injury
Verkeersnet.nl paid attention to the new definition of severely injured traffic casualties. The term ‘inpatients’ disappears from the statistics. It is replaced by the term ‘severely injured’. From now on, the Dutch Ministry of Traffic will use a method developed by SWOV to determine the number of severely injured.

Intelligent vehicle systems
Verkeersnet.nl also mentioned SWOV report Estimate of the safety effects of intelligent vehicle systems. The website draws the conclusion that casualties can be saved, but that the systems cannot be expected to perform miracles.

SWOV Annual Report 2009
The second last annual report within the SWOV Multi-year programme 2007-2010 has been published. The director's report, which discusses the main 2009 activities has been translated into English.

Estimate of the safety effects of intelligent vehicle systems
A literature study. M.W.T. Christoph. R-2010-8.
An increasing number of vehicle systems are becoming available to assist the driver in comfortable, safe and economical driving. The question presents itself if these systems do indeed result in increased safety and decreased emissions and if the systems lead to less or indeed to more congestion. This report specifically looks at the road safety effects of intelligent vehicle systems (IVS) in the Netherlands.

Effectiveness and costs of road safety measures
W. Wijnen, J. Mesken & M.A. Vis (ed.). R-2010-9.
This report discusses a study into the effectiveness and costs of sets of road safety measures. This information can be used in research and in policy preparation, for example ex-ante evaluations of road safety policy or outlooks, which require estimates of road safety effects and/or costs. In the present report, thirty sets of road safety measures are discussed systematically. Seventeen of these sets involve infrastructural measures, seven consist of behavioural measures and six are related to vehicle measures.

Updates
Crossing facilities for cyclists and pedestrians
Road crash casualties in the Netherlands
Daytime running lights (DRL)

New acquisitions
Every day, publications are added to the library collection, both those ordered by us and those sent to us. Every month, an overview of these is placed on our website, to be consulted. You will find the overview here.

European status report on road safety: towards safer roads and healthier transport choices. D. Breuer (editor). Copenhagen, WHO Regional Office for Europe, 2010, IX + 161 p., 35 ref. - ISBN 978-92-890-4176-8
This report presents the status of road safety in the WHO European Region and provides a baseline assessment of how far 49 countries have come in implementing the recommendations of the World report on road traffic injury prevention.

Long-term trends in weather-related crash risks. J. Andrey. Journal of Transport Geography, Vol. 18 (2010), No. 2 (March), p. 247-258, 49 ref.
This study explores whether automobile travel during inclement weather has become more or less risky over the past two decades. The analysis is based on the integration of two government databases and a matched-pair framework for comparing casualty rates under different weather conditions for 10 Canadian cities. The most notable result is a downward trend in relative risk during rainfall from 1984 to 2002 – both overall and when further disaggregated by injury severity combined with precipitation amount, city group, and time of day. By contrast, the overall relative risk of casualty during snowfall shows no significant change over time.

Proceedings of the Road Safety on Four Continents Conference (RS4C 2010),
Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates, March 28-30 2010. Linköping, Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute VTI, 2010, CD-ROM (1254 p.) This CD-ROM contains the proceedings of the Road Safety on Four Continents Conference, held in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates, on March 28-30 2010. The conference was organised by the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI) together with the National Transport Authority of UAE.