Road safety is a multisectoral issue and a public health issue – all sectors including health, need to be fully engaged in responsibility, activity and advocacy for road crash prevention.

The traffic system should aid users in coping with increasingly demanding conditions.

The vulnerability of the human body should be a limiting design parameter for traffic systems and speed management is central.

Any road traffic system is highly complex and hazardous to human health. Elements of the system include motor vehicles, roads and road users and their physical, social and economic environments. Making a road traffic system less hazardous requires a systems approach – understanding the system as a whole and the interaction between its elements, and identifying where there is potential for intervention. In particular, it requires recognition that the human body is highly vulnerable to injury and that humans make mistakes. A safe road traffic system is one that accommodates and compensates for human vulnerability and fallibility.

Over 30 years ago, William Haddon Jr described road transport as an ill-designed “man-machine” system in need of comprehensive systemic treatment. He produced what is now known as the Haddon Matrix, illustrating the interaction of three factors – human, vehicle and environment – during three phases of a crash event: pre-crash, crash and post-crash. The resulting nine-cell matrix models the dynamic system, with each cell of the matrix allowing opportunities for intervention to reduce road crash injury. This work led to substantial advances in the understanding of the behavioural, road-related and vehicle-related factors that affect the number and severity of road traffic injuries.

Building on Haddon’s insights, the systems approach seeks to identify and rectify the major sources of error, or design weakness, that contribute to fatal and severe injury crashes, as well as to mitigate the severity and consequences of injury by:

Reducing exposure to risk

Preventing road traffic crashes from occurring

Reducing the severity of injury in the event of a crash

Reducing the consequences of injury through improved post-collision care

Haddon'smatrix is widely used in traffic safety contexts and you can find many articles in this regard.

You could also find worthwhile material from the WHO website as follow:

http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/capacitybuilding/teach_vip/en/

Hope I could help you.

It depends on which aspects of traffic safety that you are interested in. check the following models Blooms taxonomy, three factor typology, Berg's (2006), kerskinen, Mayhew (2002) etc. I hope these materials can shape what you intend to do.

Traffic safety is a very complex topic and has at times been misused by researchers and policy makers. If you are interested to know traffic safety situations in your city, then you ca follow the following steps.

1. Get the record of traffic mishaps in the city and exact location of the mishap. The data for last 5 years must be sufficient.

2. Identify the spots or locations where accidents are frequent (more than 3 in a year, say)

3. Check the geometry, road condition, and other parameters which might have contributed to the accidents and take the corrective measures.

Before and after study are the best way to record the effectiveness of any improvement measure.

I hope it would help you to some extent.

Dear Enoch,

I quite agree with Satish Chandra.

The study of traffic safety, urban (or not) starts from the data. These can be at different levels of depth depending on the results you want to achieve: general strategy, action planning, design of the countermeasures. From the statistical data down to single police reports.

You try to give a quick read to ANALYSIS OF ROAD SAFETY: THREE LEVELS OF INVESTIGATION that I have made available now.

Then you let know me.

I will definitely have a look at the suggested articles/ papers. Your suggestions are on point and useful

It is dependent on what parameter or factor you are looking for. For instance,

i. Do you want know fatalities rate? there is a standard indices that been practices worldwide.

(a) A fatalities index to 10,000 registered vehicles, i.e < 2.0 (most developed nation) and > 5.0 (developing countries)

(b) A fatalities index to 100,000 populations, i.e 10 (developing countries)

(c) A A fatalities index to 1 Billion kilometre/mile vehicles travel (VKT/VMT), i.e 10 (developing countries)

ii. If you interested on ranking and prioritize the hazardous location. You would adopting a Blackspot Investigation and Countermeasure Scheme.

iii. If you interested on rating or preventing/mitigate/auditing the road and infrastructure. You may use iRAP (international Road Assessment Programme) and RSA (Road Safety Audits)

iv. If you interested on looking at human factor. Then, you have to look into Road Safety Intervention Programme.

That my two cent opinion.

p/s: Kindly, I advise you to searching publication under my late Prof Radin Umar Sohadi. There are plenty of documents and articles been published under his researched activities.

Dear Francesco,

Having read through your paper, I think doing a macro-level analysis is the way to go. Available official data/ statistics may support that level of analysis. I am considering some three cities here. Did I get it right?

You need reliable real world data or statistics on traffic crashes or incidents. This is standard practice worldwide, published in various documents.

There is a need to understand and assess interventions. Road authorities routinely take interventions with respect to traffic crashes, which may or may not address particular crash types. For example, traffic signals installed to mitigate right angle crashes. Does the crash data demonstrate the effectiveness of the treatment? Did the treatment introduce other crash types? For example, traffic signals usually increase rear end collisions.

Enoch feed me in the work

Dear  Enoch,

sorry for delay in answer.

Surely you've got it right. Working with three cities/towns implies use a high level of definition. For this level, again starting from official and reliable data on road accidents, you can use different indexes of accident (also those suggested by  Kamarudin Ambak for example)

Keep me updated

Good work