Developing countermeasures
Adoption of system-wide strategies
Many motorized countries responding to rising road trauma levels have achieved large reductions in casualties through outcome-oriented, system-wide and evidenced-based approaches comprising:
|
Key road safety strategies
- Reducing exposure to risk by influencing trip length, modal choice, motorized access to the network
- Preventing road traffic crashes in various settings
- Reducing the severity of injuries in the event of a crash
- Reducing the long-term consequences of crash injury
- Developing implementation, monitoring and evaluation tools
|
|
System-wide approaches
- Managing exposure to risk through transport and land-use policies
- Shaping the road network for road injury prevention
- Providing visible, crash-protective, “smart” vehicles
- Setting and securing compliance with key road safety rules
- Delivering post-crash care
World Report on Road Traffic Injury Prevention [5]
|
Road safety activity in several countries is, increasingly, being pursued in the context of environmental and health policies that encourage people to travel on foot, by cycle or by public transport rather than by car in order to reduce environmental damage and improve health. There is synergy between different objectives in several areas that can increase benefit to cost ratios and the case for implementing measures.
Selecting measures
The selection of measures depends on the overall approach to traffic safety and needs to take account of regional and local dimensions [47]
Programmes are more likely to be successful if due consideration is paid to assessments of the effectiveness of measures, their cost, practicality and public acceptability. Other social impacts such as environmental considerations, social equity and compatibility with other areas of transport and health policy.
Solid technical support is valuable in assisting with evidence-based assessments of the value of different countermeasures.
Cost-benefit analysis, cost-effectiveness and multi-criteria analysis are often used to assess the merits of one measure over the next.
| 
