Road user related risks and measures – evidence based decision support for road safety policy

Abstract

The EU-funded SafetyCube† project aims at facilitating decision making in road safety by providing systematically analysed and assessed scientific evidence on risk factors and countermeasures. While this is done for the areas infrastructure, vehicle and road users, this paper focus solely on the latter. The project outcomes are available online and are targeted at actual decision makers as well as researchers. Various stakeholders were consulted to identify hot topics and the needs of practitioners. The accessible database currently contains about 450 individual study outcomes and synopses with condensed information for 49 road risks (e.g. speeding, drink-driving, fatigue) and measures (fitness to drive, education, enforcement, campaigns, etc.) associated with all kinds of road users (vehicle drivers, cyclists, pedestrians, elderly, young, commercial drivers). In a further step, cost-benefit will be assessed on the basis of the effectiveness of countermeasures. While vehicle and infrastructure related risks and measures are well suited for effect quantification, this is a challenging endeavour for road users for many reasons.