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SWOV Programme 2003-2006

Road Safety Planning Office function introduced at SWOV

 

A Road Safety Planning Office function is introduced in the Netherlands. SWOV will carry out the Planning Office tasks. Apart from executing the planning office function, SWOV will continue to carry out fundamental and anticipatory road safety research over the coming years.

 

In addition, SWOV will remain an active partner in international research. Knowledge dissemination and knowledge management continue to occupy an important place in the Programme 2003-2006.

 

Road Safety Planning Office function

SWOV's Road Safety Planning Department will survey and analyse road safety developments in the past and aim at explaining them. In order to keep an eye on long-term road safety developments, the department will simultaneously carry out research into expectations for future developments. Not only the basic traffic data will be used when carrying out the explorations and analyses, but also the economic, social, and demographic developments will be taken into account.

The Planning Department research will focus on four tasks:

 

Anticipatory research

In the coming years, SWOV's fundamental and anticipatory research will be carried out in ten different projects.

 

The Road Safety Explorer

SWOV has an important task in supporting policy makers and road authorities in making the right decisions. In order to be best-prepared for decision-making, it is essential to make the best possible estimations of effects and the costs of measures, and to choose the best method to select the most effective set of measures. In the past period this has led to the development of the Road Safety Explorer (VVR). The project Road Safety Explorer aims at a further improvement of this method.

 

Infrastructure and road crashes

The project Infrastructure and road crashes aims to research the quantitative relationship between road infrastructure characteristics and road crashes using data to describe risk and exposure. The practical data may for instance be obtained from the VVR.

 

Analysis of speed, speed variation, and crashes

This project has one of the most important problems of the present traffic safety issue as a key topic. The essential question is to which extent speed control can help improve traffic safety under specific circumstances. To answer this question a vision on speed limits is developed which will be used as a framework for further research into the links between (variation of) speed and road crashes.

 

Measures for speed control

The project Measures for speed control focuses on possibilities to reach the desired level of speed control. Optimizing police supervision is one of the possibilities, but other measures like Intelligent Speed Adaptation (ISA) are also interesting.

 

Choice of route in a road system

Choice of route in a road system concentrates on the possibilities of influencing a driver's choice of route in such a way that the route conforms to the demands of Sustainably Safe. One of the demands that must be met is that the shortest and the safest route must correspond.

 

Recognizable layout and predictable behaviour

Recognizable layout and predictable behaviour investigates in which manner the distinguishing features of the road and its environment can influence the identification of the road and the predictable traffic behaviour which is a result. The intention is to encourage safe behaviour and make unwanted (risky) behaviour less likely.

 

Novice drivers and driver training

Understanding, influencing and measuring 'calibration' is the key issue in the project Novice drivers and driver training. In this project the term calibration is used to describe the balance between self-estimation of competences and judgement of the complexity of the driving task. The understanding which is gained, will be used to develop teaching methods and diagnostic measuring instruments for the driver training.

 

Effects of education and information campaigns

The project Effects of education and information aims at optimizing education and information programmes. In order to make a reliable estimate of the safety effects of several kinds of programme, pilot programmes are set up and evaluated.

 

Optimal investments

In the project Optimal investments standard methods and reference data are developed which can be used for cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analysis of a variety of traffic safety measures. The analyses can be used in different phases of decision making.

 

Use of information in decision-making on traffic safety

The project Use of information in decision-making on traffic safety consists of two parts. The first part concerns the influence of cooperation during the decision-making process in relation to public acceptance on traffic safety policy. In the second part of the project, the relevance of traffic safety interests for the decisions on investments in road infrastructure, is investigated.

 

Other activities

Knowledge management

These topics do not cover the entire field of road safety. SWOV will actively gather, interpret and update the knowledge within four so-called 'domains': Road user, Vehicle, Road, and Supporting Processes/Information. In turn, each of these domains contains a large number of subjects. SWOV will regularly report the results within each of the domains by means of literature studies and fact sheets.

 

International

In the Programme 2003-2006, SWOV will also remain internationally active. The work will generally be carried out in international projects, mainly within the EU.

 

Knowledge dissemination

The results of SWOV research are published in reports and articles. These reports are not only available in printed form but, since 2000, can be consulted and downloaded from the SWOV website (www.swov.nl). The Knowledge Base can also be found there, providing all road safety professionals with an enormous amount of information. Finally, SWOV's library of 100,000 titles will also continue to expand.

 

More detailed information about the SWOV Programme 2003-2006 is available in the Dutch language SWOV report R-2003-18. Presently a brochure in the English language is being prepared, and on completion will also be published on the website.
SWOV Research Activities 23 - September 2003

Knowledge base