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A Road Safety Information System: from concept to implementation

Improving the road safety of a country can be greatly supported by a nation-wide road safety information system. A well-developed system can help road safety professionals in dealing with information on the most important road safety problems and on the most effective and efficient policy interventions. It can also create a sound basis for co-operation between all key actors in the field of road safety.

A country must answer three central questions in trying to improve its road safety:

For this last purpose, a nation-wide road safety information system can be very helpful. If well used, it ensures that all road safety professionals involved have easy access to the same information; information which is up-to-date, relevant, qualified, and which meets as much as possible international standards and conventions. Besides supporting decision making, a road safety information system will also improve communication, because people use the same references. SWOV contributed to a road safety training course organized by the World Bank on the topic of how such an information system can be developed (SWOV report D-2001-14).

Traditionally, the main emphasis of a road safety information system has been laid on road accident data. However, accident data is as such not enough to interpret and explain road safety developments. The Land Transport Safety Authority in New Zealand developed a philosophy for a safety information system, which can be visualized as a pyramid construction with four different levels, representing four different types of information (see figure below). The idea behind this construction is that data at all levels of the pyramid is necessary to describe and understand the process leading to accidents.

The bottom level of the pyramid model represents road safety policy. Implementation of policy leads to certain changes in road traffic (the next level), such as drink driving, speeding, and road network quality. Such parameters are known as safety performance indicators and have a causal relationship with accidents and casualties (discussed in a recent ETSC report entitled Transport Safety Performance Indicators). Improving 'safety performance' will thus influence the next level, containing the accident data. The top level of the pyramid contains data that express all negative consequences of accidents, quantified as social costs.

Social costs

Numbers killed, injured (final outcomes)

Safety performance indicators (intermediate outcomes)

Safety measures and safety programmes (inputs)

At the level of road accident registration, the police traditionally plays a central role, and will continue to do so. However, the processing of these data and making them available to traffic and transport professionals is preferably done by a designated government body or agency. It is recommended that this registering body has no pursuit of profit and that access to the accident data is free of charge.

The adoption of a multi-level approach as described above, implies other registrations than accident registration alone. It is recommended to link and combine these data sources, and to compare and relate the data in order to maximize data quality and usability. Another key factor to the success of a road safety information system is a group of sufficiently educated staff who can communicate with (potential) users about the valid use of the database, and who can analyse the data and publish them, including the interpretation. It is recommended to organize a system of feedback between suppliers of the data, its processors and its users (or their representatives).

The Netherlands has a national information system operational since 1993, aimed at road safety professionals at the national, regional, and local level. Especially the exchange of ideas between all parties involved contributed to the large-scale dissemination of the system and to the contents of the system fitting to the users' occupations. Other countries could profit from experiences here.

SWOV Research Activities 18 - November 2001

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