Search

Road safety forecasting and ex-ante evaluation of road safety policy are useful tools in policy making. This paper illustrates the use of these instruments in policy making in the Netherlands. As part of an interim evaluation of achieving Dutch road safety targets, the numbers of fatalities and serious road injuries were estimated for 2020. From these forecasts, it was concluded that the target for serious road injuries most probably would not be met without additional policy measures. Therefore, the Minister of Infrastructure and the Environment in the Netherlands decided to take additional measures. From an ex-ante evaluation of these measures, it was concluded that also with these additional measures the target for the number of serious road injuries in 2020 will most probably not be met.

Road safety policy plans often require robust calculation of the expected number of road casualties in a certain target year. The relevance of such estimations should be measured by their power to influence and support safety policy makers. Thus, techniques to evaluate the safety developments and the estimating methods must be sound, robust, and preferably accepted by both policy makers and the scientific community. In this paper, we concentrate on choosing an appropriate model used for the calculation, rather than on statistical techniques. We calculate a casualty rate from casualty data and mobility (distance travelled) data, which is extrapolated and subsequently multiplied by an expected future distance travelled. After correction for separately assessed effects of additional safety measures, the number of casualties is estimated. We investigate a method where this is done after both mobility data and casualty data are stratified into properly chosen subsets. Projecting these different trends generally leads to a result that differs from the projection of the aggregated data. Also, stratification enables incorporation in the estimation of explaining factors or additional measures related to a specific subset of the casualties. The principles of stratified projections are illustrated by three Dutch projections which were carried out between 2006 and 2008. Also, some preliminary results of further research on stratification are given. The results imply that the rates of change in casualty rate for different traffic modes or driver age, are not necessarily equal. We propose that these specific decreasing trends are a consequence of external influencing factors.

This paper discusses the method used for an outlook on road safety in the Netherlands until 2020. The objectives of the outlook are to judge the feasibility of the Dutch road safety policy targets and to estimate the effects in 2020 of new measures. The outlook consists of baseline forecasts assuming the unchanged continuation of the effect of current road safety policy as a starting point, and the effect of new measures on top of that. We used four different mobility scenarios, derived from a comprehensive study about the macro-economic development of Dutch society until 2040. In the mobility scenario with the largest growth it appeared doubtful whether the policy targets of that time for the maximum number of fatalities in 2020 (580) can be achieved. An extensive inventory of new measures after 2010 produced five already intended new measures, the effects of which were estimated. The results show that the target of maximum 580 fatalities in 2020 can probably be met. The recently adjusted policy target of 500 fatalities in 2020 is also feasible if additional new measures are taken.

The unavailability of consistent traffic accident data and road safety information limits the opportunities to provide target approaches to reduce road crashes. The European commission has decided to meet the demand for this data by establishing a new Road Safety Observatory. The structure and much of the initial content is being developed within the SafetyNet Integrated Project. This paper describes the structure of its key components.