Monitoring targets

Systematic and transparent quantified monitoring of the implementation of road safety strategy and progress towards meeting Government targets is essential both for maintaining the motivation of stakeholders (and hence the effectiveness of implementation) and for updating of the strategy and targets in light of experience.

Data sources

Monitoring and updating are integral parts of implementation and require appropriate collection, processing and publication of reliable data for

• Continuous monitoring of targeted and other safety performance indicators
• Establishing the effectiveness of specific road safety measures by carrying out before and after studies
• Reviewing and updating of policies and measures with re-distribution of resources towards more cost-effective measures
• Identifying delays in implementation requiring corrective action
• Establishing the level of public support for interventions

Most countries which are active in road safety have a comprehensive set of databases across transport, health and justice sectors to inform road safety problem analysis, target-setting, and the monitoring and evaluation of programmes, measures and performance. A range of organizations are involved.

Safety performance indicators or intermediate outcome data. The data requirements and the level and type of disaggregation are closely linked to the detail of the road safety plan. They include:

• Crash or casualty indicators e.g. collision and casualty data from police, hospital and insurance records
• Behavioural indicators e.g. survey data on changes in speed or seat belt use
• Process and system indicators e.g. data on the number of hazardous locations treated, the number of junctions improved for safety, and the percentage of the vehicle fleet with 4* and 5* safety ratings.

A recent review of safety performance indicators in use can be found in SafetyNet WP3 Safety Performance Indicators

Safety performance indicators are used in many countries to monitor progress, although only a few countries have a comprehensive system which seeks to monitor the quality of the whole system. Sweden, which has been using safety performance indicators for several years, has been developing its monitoring system further to include:

Evaluation methodologies Evaluations of the effectiveness of countermeasures are essential to focus further development and prioritise further actions. National or EU level accident data can be used to describe overall trends but in-depth data is normally the most effective in assessing detailed engineering changes whether vehicle, infrastructure or road user behaviour based.

Public acceptance surveys covering representative samples of road user opinion are helpful in establishing levels of understanding and support for different interventions. These can often be used to place the contributions of narrowly focused lobbies into an appropriate context.

Independent review Sometimes, national road safety performance, strategy and targets are evaluated in formal, published and independent peer reviews to achieve impartial, expert and transparent assessment. In Britain, for example, there has been in-house review as well as two independent evaluations of road safety performance against the road safety targets [7] [8] (Broughton and Buckle, 2005 and 2007). The 2007 review concluded that the headline target for reducing the the number of killed and seriously injured road casualties (40%) would probably be met, but that the principal challenge would be to achieve a greater reduction in deaths than the current reduction (19%) against baseline. The review looked at progress to date in implementation in various areas of the strategy compared with the original assessment made in the target-setting process.

Road safety inspection bodies monitor the rate of implementation of road safety measures and examine their quality. For example, the Swedish Road Traffic Inspectorate was established on 1^st January 2003 as a division of the Swedish Road Administration. It has 14 employees. The Road Traffic Inspectorate is independent of the rest of SRA organization though it reports to the SRA Board of Directors [32].