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Taxonomy and description
There exists a wide range of accident remedial measures, many of which also have impacts on the challenges KonSULT deals with. A broad spectrum of road safety measures are considered in the Elsevier Handbook of Road Safety Measures (Elvik et al. 2009). These include: General purpose policy instruments e.g. vehicle taxation and land use planning, road design and road furniture, road maintenance, traffic enforcement, vehicle inspection, driver training and licensing, public education and information campaigns and police enforcement and sanctions. In this section we have narrowed accident remedial measures to the following management measures, not included in other sections of KonSULT:
Speed limitation can be introduced by legal and/or physical measures. Most countries have general and signposted speed limits stating the highest permitted driving speed on a road. Speed reducing devices are described in detail in traffic calming and pedestrian crossings.
Single measures and strategic policies Measures to increase road safety will often be linked together. Important strategic policy dimensions, including several different measures, are:
Due to the large number of traffic accidents, most countries can base their traffic safety actions or policy on event records i.e. accident registers. In towns and cities, there is a tendency for traffic accidents to cluster at specific places, often at intersections. Increases in accidents at a specific spot may partly be due to inappropriate road design or inappropriate traffic enforcement at that place. Studies give varied results, but overall they indicate that the treatment of both black spots and black sections reduce the number of accidents at the treated sites (Elvik et al. 1997, Elvik & Vaa 2003, Geurts and Wets 2003). Analysis of blackspots and the impact of remedial measures at these points is complicated by a number of factors including regression to the mean (see Maher and Mountain 2009). The effect of black spot treatment on the environment and on demand depends on the measures used. Norway and Sweden have for a long time been regarded as leading countries in road safety. Governments in both countries have defined Vision Zero as the long-term target for transport safety. Vision Zero aims for a transport system in which nobody is killed or seriously injured. Elvik (1999, 2000) has studied the potential of accident reduction of various road safety strategies. The strategies shown in Table 1 consist of different packages of measures, e.g. “business as usual” means a strategy where one will continue to use the safety measures used today. Table 2 shows that all alternatives to “business as usual” will reduce the annual number of road accident fatalities. According to this table, the costs of road safety measures are lower in a benefit cost strategy than in a “business as usual” strategy. It is, in other words, possible to improve road safety substantially without increasing current public spending on road safety measures. Further, while a Vision Zero strategy may be expensive, there is work suggesting that the impact of a Vision Zero (VZ) policy can mean that “a non-strict version of the VZ may actually from an economic point of view be part of an optimal second-best strategy” (Johansson-Stenman, 2000).Table 1: Summary of effects of alternative road safety strategies in Norway and Sweden. Annual number of road accident fatalities. The benefits include the total monetary benefits for safety, mobility and the environment. Amounts in million NOK. 1 NOK = 0.13 US Dollars. (Source: Elvik 2001)
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Terminology
Speed enforcement includes stationary methods (using radar and similar devices) and speed and behavioural enforcement using "mobile "methods or surveillance/police patrols. Speed cameras generally involve violations of traffic regulations being detected and registered and the vehicle/driver identified automatically - i.e. without police officers being physically present at the time and place where the traffic violation occurs.