Implementing, monitoring, evaluating, and updating a road safety programme

In all EU countries, attempts are being made to promote road safety, and each country has its own approach. This contribution examines the implementation of road safety programmes, their monitoring and evaluation, and their updating. For analyzing policy implementation, monitoring and evaluation, a road safety hierarchy model is used in which the indicators of the various layers of the model illustrate the state of affairs. Based on general lessons about the effectiveness of policy processes, two checklists are presented. The first one relates to the contents of policy documents, the second one to the quality of policy implementation. Four key-components for effective implementation of policy can be indicated: organization, coordination, financing and knowledge/information. Monitoring and evaluation of policy implementation are core matters in every policy, thus also in road safety policy. In the literature, too little attention is paid to implementation aspects of road safety programmes. I recommend that policymakers in the European Union and in the individual Member States, as well as the research community pay systematic attention to implementation aspects of road safety programmes. It is plausible that a better policy implementation will result in a greater effectiveness; certainly greater efficiency would be attained. It is to be expected that the policy effectiveness will increase, not only by paying attention to the implementation of action plans and programmes, but also when drawing up road safety programmes.