Regional government

The sharing of responsibility for road safety at governmental level can be influenced by macro-societal policy, changes in public service delivery, as well as changes in transport policy. Over the last thirty years, there has been a trend in many high-income countries for less central governance with more local and regional decision-making across a range of public policy. Some countries, such as Belgium and Germany have a long tradition in regional road safety activity. Others have decentralized over a period of time.

In the Netherlands, for example, the Central Government’s motto is to “decentralize whenever possible and centralized only when necessary. Road safety was decentralized in 1994 followed by further changes in funding mechanisms. Provincial and municipal government have their own responsibilities and the financing and implementation of Sustainable Safety within the National Traffic and Transport Plan 2001-2020 are decentralized. Central government is mainly responsible for the design/layout of national roads, general measures such as laws, public information, and enforcement, helping local and regional government with knowledge and funding. Provincial and municipal authorities draw up provincial/municipal traffic and transport plans. In these plans there are measures for sustainably-safe design of regional and local roads, and for influencing behaviour via public information, instruction, education, and police enforcement. The Decentralization Agreement specified that each of the 19 regions should have a Provincial Safety Board (ROV) in which all parties involved in traffic safety co-ordinate their individual activities at provincial and local level. Each of the 19 ROVs brings together representatives of the region, local authorities through a chosen delegation, the police, the Regional Office of the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Justice. In addition, private sector organizations participating in the national consultation body (OVV) are also represented in some ROVs [32]^.

Challenging second-generation strategies as well as long-term targets necessitate shared responsibility at different levels of government and, increasingly, national targets are being translated into regional and local targets e.g. the Netherlands (see Target setting).