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When dealing with road safety in Africa, one should bear in mind that road safety problems need to be seen in their context as the solutions proposed to address them. While it is relevant to consider international good practices, African stakeholders should become owners of the interventions addressing their problems and take the responsibility for developing and implementing the appropriate solutions, taking advantage of suitable technical assistance, if needed. Based on these considerations, in this paper, a presentation is made of the process used in the European research project SaferAfrica to define suitable Safe System projects in Africa. This project aims at supporting policymakers and stakeholders with evidence on critical risk factors, related actions, and good practices drawn from high-quality data and knowledge. In the project, road safety and traffic management capacity reviews at the country level were carried out in five countries (Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Tunisia, Kenya, and South Africa), following the World Bank guidelines. After conducting such a capacity review, these guidelines recommend the preparation and implementation of Safe System projects, “stand-alone, multisector initiatives targeting high-risk corridors and areas, with outcomes large enough to be reliably measured.” In SaferAfrica, this approach aims at facilitating the implementation of Safe System projects in the considered countries, by identifying detailed short-term improvement plans and producing contextualized terms of reference for some interventions per selected country. These interventions are remedial, they address high-priority concerns and demonstrate the viability of high potential gains within current administrative and legislative frameworks. To design interventions suitable to the existing context, the transferability audit tool was adopted within a “participative” process, involving all possible interested parties, from the institutions to NGOs. Results from the process are presented and discussed.

Introduction: The number of road fatalities have been falling throughout the European Union (EU) over the past 20 years and most Member States have achieved an overall reduction. Research has mainly focused on protecting car occupants, with car occupant fatalities reducing significantly. However, recently there has been a plateauing in fatalities amongst ‘Vulnerable Road Users’ (VRUs), and in 2016 accidents involving VRUs accounted for nearly half of all EU road deaths. Method: The SaferWheels study collected in-depth data on 500 accidents involving Powered Two-Wheelers (PTWs) and bicycles across six European countries. A standard in-depth accident investigation methodology was used by each team. The Driver Reliability and Error Analysis Method (DREAM) was used to systematically classify accident causation factors. Results: The most common causal factors related to errors in observation by the PTW/bicycle rider or the driver of the other vehicle, typically called ‘looked but failed to see’ accidents. Common scenarios involved the other vehicle turning or crossing in front of the PTW/bicycle. A quarter of serious or fatal injuries to PTW riders occurred in accidents where the rider lost control with no other vehicle involvement. Conclusions: Highly detailed data have been collected for 500 accidents involving PTWs or bicycles in the EU. These data can be further analyzed by researchers on a case-study basis to gain detailed insights on such accidents. Preliminary analysis suggests that ‘looked but failed to see’ remains a common cause, and in many cases the actions of the other vehicle were the critical factor, though PTW rider speed or inexperience played a role in some cases. Practical Applications: The collected data can be analyzed to better understand the characteristics and causes of accidents involving PTWs and bicycles in the EU. The results can be used to develop policies aimed at reducing road deaths and injuries to VRUs.

Road traffic movement at nightfall (twilight) is characterizing by a reduction of light time of the day and the rapid nightfall onset, thus the driver’s eyes have less time to adapt to rapid sudden changes in illumination. The visual perception and the reaction time of the driver in conditions when pedestrians appear in nightfall conditions on the street and road network in a city is considered in the paper. Researched was conducted in uncontrolled pedestrian crossings in nightfall conditions on Ukrainian roads. Regularities of the vehicle’s driver and pedestrians’ interaction in nightfall conditions are obtained. Road traffic accidents occurrence probabilities at the twilight time considering the driver’s reaction time and the car’s movement parameters was analyzed. As a result, a model for estimating the variation the reaction time of the driver when a pedestrian appears in the nightfall (twilight) conditions was calibrated.

Network Safety Ranking and Road Assessment Programme (RAP) are two procedures used in road infrastructure safety management to rank the road sections of a network according to estimated road safety performance. The former uses indicators based on road accidents and their consequences while the latter method is based primarily on inspections of the road infrastructure. The aim of this study was to verify whether there is a relationship between the indicators used within these methods, in order to evaluate if and under which conditions RAP scores contribute to the prediction of accident numbers. The adopted approach is based on the calibration and analysis of a wide array of models in order to reproduce the observed events – injury road accidents, fatalities and injuries - with reference to different aggregations of the original data and in the two reference situations: with and without EuroRAP (European Road Assessment Programme) indicators. . From the obtained results, the introduction of the EuroRAP indicators ends up making the models that explain the frequency of accidents more convincing from a statistical point of view. These indicators, which summarise the road safety performance of a road section, could prove useful in replacing the covariates (e.g. presence of intersections, geometrical and functional features of roads) that are used in the calibration of accident prediction models. However, it should be stressed that not all types of accident are addressed by the EuroRAP approach, and this may represent a limitation for those roadways where such kind of accidents are frequently observed, like rear-end collisions on motorways. Probably, by including these accident types, the explanatory power of the EuroRAP variables would increase, at least on motorways.

The risk of traffic fatalities varies significantly across high, medium and low-income countries. Among the reasons for this in the latter ones, there is often a lack of road safety knowledge and political will. Road safety is a multidisciplinary topic and requires trained professionals able to identify and implement efficient measures in the areas of engineering, enforcement, education and emergency services, taking into consideration social and economic aspects as well. However, in some Eastern Europe Countries there are potential barriers to train adequately professionals, generally due to a lack of specialised training and training standardization. Such an example can be seen in Belarus where, although road safety is a key issue, it is not managed on an evidence-based approach and there seems to be insufficient funding for related research. An initiative towards increasing knowledge capacity is the Be-Safe project (EC Tempus), a joint effort between three EU Universities and four Belarusian Universities. The objective of this paper is to describe the methodology carried out in Be-Safe to develop and test for two years two 1st level Road Safety Master Courses (60 ECTS) in Belarus according to the Bologna process requirements. Initially, a User Needs Analysis was carried out to understand local conditions and needs in terms of teaching and research on road safety. The analysis highlighted a lack of research due to insufficient funding, linguistic barriers and inadequate international relationships. This isolation led to a need of updating contents and methods of courses for students as well as research topics. Then, expected learning outcomes and Masters’ curricula, one for the Technical Universities and one for the Economics Universities, were defined and developed respectively. Finally, Masters’ courses in four Belarusian Universities were tested. Quality results were ensured through a Quality Board and assessment tools to monitor the Masters’ process as a whole.

Wearing a safety restraint system is one of the most effective measures to substantially reduce the risk of serious or fatal accidents. Despite their benefits, a survey in 2015 revealed that on average 62 out of 100 Italian front car occupants wore their seat belt and only 15% of the rear seat passengers were regularly wearing their seat belt. According to several studies, one’s (driving) behaviour is based on a combination of attitudes toward the behaviour, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control. The present study aims at understanding factors contributing to the low wearing rates in Italy. The data used are based on a questionnaire survey carried out among a representative sample of more than 1.000 Italian drivers within the ESRA project (European Survey of Road users’ safety Attitudes). The survey involved 17 European countries and covered several themes on (un)safe traffic behaviour and attitudes among which those related to the use of seat belts and child restraint systems. Two methods of investigation were adopted: the comparison between the Italian situation with the European best performers, pointing out the relevant difference with the included selected European Countries, and the use of regression models to study the association between several explanatory variables and self-declared behaviours related to the use of safety restraint systems. The main results show a high acceptability of risky behaviour in Italy and a relevant contribution of age and gender in shaping attitudes towards unsafe traffic behaviours. A number of recommendations are proposed to change people’s unsafe behaviour and attitudes in Italy, providing both enforcement and voluntary (e.g. campaigns, education and training, incentives) measures.

Africa is the worst performing continent in road safety: the fatality rate, 26.6 per 100.000 inhabitants, is almost three times that of Europe’s and fatalities per capita are projected to double from 2015 to 2030 (WHO, 2015). This is mainly due to the fact that Emerging Economies are experiencing increases in traffic, for which their traffic systems are not sufficiently prepared. On one hand, there is a significant demand for data and knowledge to be used for road safety-related decision making. On the other hand, there is a substantial lack of a reliable and detailed knowledge on road casualties in terms of the number of road accidents and fatalities occurring and, on the factors, leading to road accidents or affecting their consequences. When official data are poor or missing these could be integrated with other sources. The objective of this paper is to describe the African Road Safety Observatory (African RSO), a participative web portal developed in the field of the "SaferAfrica – Innovating dialogue and problems appraisal for a safer Africa" project, funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 program. The African RSO combines traditional functions of analyzing and sharing road safety performance data and provide knowledge and information, with the more innovative ones: a Dialogue Platform and the crowdsourcing tool. The Dialogue Platform is dedicated to experts and stakeholders and aims at encouraging and facilitating a constructive engagement and dialogue on road safety in Africa, producing knowledge to inspire road safety funding, policies and interventions in Africa and providing recommendations to update the African Road Safety Action Plan and the African Road Safety Charter. The crowdsourcing tool allows African citizens to report and highlight road safety needs, to share opinions as well as to discuss solutions in their own Countries.

The interaction between drivers and pedestrians at a pedestrian crossing is studied using the method of ergonomic design. The galvanic skin response (GSR) and changes of the heart rate of drivers have been measured to monitor any emotional state change when encountering a pedestrian at a pedestrian crossing. If the driver moves away from the pedestrian standing at the roadside edge, the driver experiences a minimal emotional change. However, if there is no vehicle speed and path variation, the driver experiences significant shift in the GSR and heart rate, thus highlighting a possible increase of the stress level. It was based on the research where the distance and current speed have a significant impact on the drivers and pedestrians with the following consequences for their health. To assess the influence of a pedestrian presence on the road on drivers, it was proposed to use the angular velocity of the vehicle with respect to pedestrians. The probability of the pedestrians presence in a dangerous condition for drivers at different distances and speeds of pedestrian crossing made it possible to find an optimal pedestrian position on the road. Thus, the paper proposed a safe distance for pedestrians on the road at a pedestrian crossing in order to reduce the driver stress level in the traffic flow.

Motor vehicle accidents are a leading cause of death and injuries among children of different age worldwide, though many of these incidents are preventable. Buckling young children in age- and size-appropriate car seats, booster seats, using seat belts and also fixing them in appropriate position can lead to a significant reduction of serious and fatal injuries. The key factors simultaneously influencing restraint use include vehicle type, driver’s gender and age, driver’s belt use, child’s age, the presence of other child or adult passenger etc. Furthermore, time of day and day of week also influence child passenger sitting and his behavior. Cross-sectional studies are observational in nature and are known as descriptive research, so application of the method of cross-sectional analysis allow collecting data from many different individuals at a single point in time and observing variables without influencing them and at the same time to provide understanding parents’ attitude towards children safe transportation.

The road safety performance of a country and the success of policy measures can be measured and monitored in different ways. In addition to the traditional road safety indicators based on the number of fatalities or injured people in road traffic accidents, complementary road safety performance indicators can be used, in relation to vehicles, infrastructure or road users' behaviour. The latter can be based on data from road-side surveys or from questionnaire surveys. However, results of such surveys are seldom comparable across countries due to differences in aims, scope, or methodology. Thus, the E-Survey of Road users' Attitudes (ESRA) was launched in 2015 aiming to collect and analyse comparable data on road safety performance at an international level, in particular on road safety culture and road users' behaviour. At the heart of ESRA is a questionnaire, conducted online, using representative samples of the national adult population of the participating countries. In its first edition, carried out between 2015 and 2017, ESRA covered almost 40,000 respondents from 38 countries across the world. This paper is based on the second edition of ESRA, which was carried out in 2018 and includes data from more than 35,000 road users across 32 countries. The objective is to present the main results of ESRA survey regarding the four most important risky driving behaviours in traffic: driving under the influence (alcohol/drugs), speeding, mobile phone use while driving and fatigued driving. The paper explores several aspects related to these behaviours, such as the self-declared behaviours, acceptability and risk perception, support for policy measures, and opinions on traffic rules and penalties. Results show that despite the high perception of risk and low acceptability of all the risky driving behaviours analysed, there is still a high percentage of car drivers who engage in risky behaviours in traffic in all the regions analysed. Speeding and the use of a mobile phone while driving were the most reported behaviours. Most respondents support policy measures to restrict the risky behaviour in traffic and believe that traffic rules should be stricter and are not being checked enough. The ESRA survey proved to be a valuable source of information to understand the processes underlying road traffic accidents. It offers a unique database and provides policy makers and researchers valuable insights into public perception of road safety.

Post-license advanced driver training (ADT) addresses different categories of road users such as: novice drivers, professional drivers, company employers and recidivists. These training courses can be carried out on-track or on the road. On-track courses allow participants to gain knowledge on driving physics and experience limits in a safe road environment. On-road courses are more focused on hazard perception and situation awareness. Although extensive research has been done in this field, knowledge of the effects of these courses on road accident risk remains unclear. Previous evaluation of on-track courses did not always show a positive effect on crash rate. For example, post-license training focused on mastery of driving skills can lead to an increase of accident risk, especially on young males. However, research identified several factors that may enhance the effectiveness of driving training. In Europe a new framework for driver education and training has been proposed based on a safe driver hierarchical model (the GADGET model) and the development of a strategy for continuous learning. According to this framework, an evaluation study of on-track post-license advanced driver training has been undertaken in Italy with the main goal of assessing the safety effects of these courses and identifying training aspects to be improved. Besides crash rate, the study aims at assessing also driver behavior, knowledge of risks, self-evaluation and training quality. This paper presents the results of the possible effects of advanced driver training on driving behavior, considering in particular the number and type of violations. For each driver, data on age, gender and driving violations history were extracted from the platform and the national violations database. Three cases were addressed through a before-after analysis with control group. Case 1 considers all drivers who attended an ADT course. Case 2 aimed at understanding the effects of the courses on a specific target group: the traffic violators. Case 3 is similar to Case 2, however the control group was selected in a way that drivers characteristics and the violation rate was similar to the violation rate of the treatment group in the before period.The significance of the differences highlighted was assessed through appropriate statistical tests (i.e. paired t-test and the Wilcoxon signed-rank test). The study showed in general a higher propensity to commit traffic violations after attending an ADT course. These results are in contrast to what expected and show the necessity to diversify the training classes according to the different needs of participants.

Road Infrastructure Safety Management (RISM) refers to a set of procedures that support a road authority in decision making related to the improvement of safety on a road network. Some of these procedures can be applied to existing infrastructure, thus enabling a reactive approach; and other procedures are used in early stages of a project's life-cycle allowing a proactive approach. The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of the most well-known procedures and present a series of recommendations for successful road infrastructure safety management. The work described in the paper was completed by the IRTAD sub-working group on Road Infrastructure Safety Management and presented in detail in the respective Report. The methodology followed on this purpose included the description of the most consolidated RISM procedures, the analysis of the use of RISM procedures worldwide and the identification of possible weaknesses and barriers to their implementation, the provision of good practice examples and the contribution to the scientific assessment of procedures. Specifically, the following RISM procedures were considered: Road Safety Impact Assessment (RIA), Efficiency Assessment Tools (EAT), Road Safety Audit (RSA), Network Operation (NO), Road Infrastructure Safety Performance Indicators (SPI), Network Safety Ranking (NSR), Road Assessment Programs (RAP), Road Safety Inspection (RSI), High Risk Sites (HRS) and In-depth Investigation. Each procedure was described along with tools and data needed for its implementation as well as relevant common practices worldwide. A synthesis summarizing the key information for each procedure was also drafted. Based on a survey on 23 IRTAD member countries from worldwide, the lack of resources or tools is the most commonly stated reason for not applying a RISM procedure. This has been frequently found mainly in European countries. Another common reason is the absence of recommendations/guidelines, especially for SPI, RAP, RSI and RSA. This highlights the importance of the presence of some legislation regulating the application of the procedures. Lack of data was found important mainly for SPI, HRS and EAT. Good practices of road infrastructure safety management have been explored in order to find solutions to the issues highlighted by the survey and provide examples about how these issues have been overcome in some countries. Specifically, issues related to data, legal framework, funding, knowledge, tools and dealing with more RISM procedures were addressed. Finally, nine key messages and six recommendations for better Road Infrastructure Safety Management were developed based on the conclusions made.

Introduction Smeed's law defines the functional relationship existing between the fatality rate and the motorization rate. While focusing on the Italian case and based on the Smeed's law, the study assesses the possibility for Italy of reaching the target of halving the number of road fatalities by 2020, in light of the evolving socio-economic situation. Method A Smeed's model has been calibrated based on the recorded Italian data. The evolution of the two indicators, fatality and motorization rates, has been estimated using the predictions of the main parameters (population, fleet size and fatalities). Those trends have been compared with the natural decreasing trend derived from the Smeed's law. Results Nine scenarios have been developed showing the relationship between the fatality rate and the motorization rate. In case of a limited increase (logistic regression) of the vehicle fleet and according to the estimated evolution of the population, the path defined by motorization and fatality rate is very steep, diverging from the estimated confidence interval of the Smeed's model. In these scenarios the motorization rate is almost constant during the decade. Conclusions In the actual economic context, a limited development of the vehicle fleet is more plausible. In these conditions the target achievement of halving the number of fatalities in Italy may occur only in case of a structural break (i.e., the introduction of highly effective road safety policies). Practical application The proposed tools can be used both to evaluate retrospectively the effectiveness of road safety improvements and to assess if a relevant effort is needed to reach the established road safety targets. Keywords Road safety; Trend; Smeed's law Language: en

Many studies investigated the relationship between accident risk factors related to driving behaviour (e.g. distraction, aggressive driving) and the involvement in a road accident. However less attention has been given to aspects related to driver insecurity and the effects of the overall driving patterns. The main target of this research were twofold: 1) The identification of driving behaviour profiles taking into account also insecurity. 2) The analysis of the association between the identified profiles and their accident involvement. A survey was undertaken among a sample of Italian drivers to assess driving distraction, aggressiveness, indiscipline and insecurity. The items of the used questionnaire were mostly derived from the literature (e.g. Driver Behaviour Questionnaire). Behavioural tendencies of drivers to distraction, aggressiveness, indiscipline and insecurity were studied through Multiple Correspondence Analysis. By using Cluster Analysis seven groups of drivers with similar behaviours were identified. A significant association between the seven groups and road accident involvement was found. This statistical approach allows the identification of driving behaviour profiles that could be used for driving training purposes. The answers to the questionnaire can for instance highlight an aggressive and/or insecure driving behaviour thus tailoring the theoretical and practical driving exercises to the specific driver needs, especially for novice drivers.

Data collected from in-depth road accident investigations are very informative and may contain more than 500 accident-related variables for a single investigated case. These data may be used to get a more detailed knowledge on accident and injury causation associated with a specific accident scenario. However, due to their complexity, studies using in-depth data at aggregated levels are not common. The objective of this paper is to propose a methodology to analyse aggregated accident causation charts in order to highlight strong and weak relationships between crash causes and pre-crash scenarios. These relationships can be taken into account when developing or assessing new road safety measures (e.g. in-vehicle systems). The methodology has been applied to an in-depth accident dataset derived from the European project SafetyNet. Four different pre-crash scenarios associated with the accident scenario 'vehicles encountering something while remaining in their lane' have been investigated. Even if generalization of these results should be done with care because of database representativeness issues, the methodology is promising, highlighting, for example, a well-defined causation pattern related to vehicles striking a vehicle in rear-end accidents.

In this paper a unified methodology is presented for the modelling of the evolution of road safety in 30 European countries. For each country, annual data of the best available exposure indicator and of the number of fatalities were simultaneously analysed with the bivariate latent risk time series model. This model is based on the assumption that the amount of exposure and the number of fatalities are intrinsically related. It captures the dynamic evolution in the fatalities as the product of the dynamic evolution in two latent trends: the trend in the fatality risk and the trend in the exposure to that risk. Before applying the latent risk model to the different countries it was first investigated and tested whether the exposure indicator at hand and the fatalities in each country were in fact related at all. If they were, the latent risk model was applied to that country; if not, a univariate local linear trend model was applied to the fatalities series only, unless the latent risk time series model was found to yield better forecasts than the univariate local linear trend model. In either case, the temporal structure of the unobserved components of the optimal model was established, and structural breaks in the trends related to external events were identified and captured by adding intervention variables to the appropriate components of the model. As a final step, for each country the optimally modelled developments were projected into the future, thus yielding forecasts for the number of fatalities up to and including 2020. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The safety level of a pedestrian crossing is affected by infrastructure characteristics and vehicular and pedestrian traffic level. This paper presents a methodology that allows assessing the safety level of a pedestrian crossing, regulated or not by traffic light, in an urban area according to the features of the crossing. A hierarchical structure representing factors influencing crossing safety has been developed and the relative contributions of each factor were calculated using AHP method. A composite index for crossing safety and specific indexes for main aspects included in the assessment have been developed. Main assessment aspects are: Spatial and Temporal Design, Day-time and Night-time Visibility and Accessibility. Night-time Visibility resulted to have the higher weight (about 41%). Developed indexes allow ranking of pedestrian crossings and assigning intervention priorities, highlighting the aspects which are to be enhanced. The methodology has been used for the evaluation of 215 pedestrian crossings in 17 European cities for the Pedestrian Crossing Assessment Project co-financed by FIA Foundation.

Road Safety Management (RSM) can be briefly defined as the tasks of preparing and implementing road safety policies. Many studies have been carried out on RSM, trying to identify success factors and reference best practice examples, but the complexity of the subject and the difficulty of quantitative data collection make it difficult a clear and comprehensive understanding. According to the EC-funded DACOTA research project, the weakest components of RSM systems in Europe are policy implementation and funding and the lack of knowledge-based road safety policy making.The main objective of the research, undertaken within the FERSI's working group on Road Safety Management (RSM), is to better investigate in several European countries those two RSM key functions: funding and research. Particularly the study aims at 1) exploring the existing structures, processes and factors affecting funding and research performances; 2) defining an assessment framework able to measure single country performances with reference to the efficiency and effectiveness of road safety funding and research, possibly shifting from a qualitative to a more quantitative approach.Based on the available knowledge on these two topics (research and funding), an assessment framework is defined and a set of qualitative and quantitative indicators for funding and research performance measurement is proposed. A desk analysis aiming at collecting available data useful to estimate the proposed indicators is conducted and a preliminary analysis with this subset of indicators is undertaken. A subset of research indicators (bibliometric) are used to estimate road safety research outputs performance of a country in terms of productivity and quality of research and international collaboration activities. Preliminary results show a positive correlation among them, even if the linear correlation turns to be not so strong. Countries are ranked on the basis of a composite index of all the three indicators.Data related to the full set of indicators will be collected, in the next phase of the research, through a dedicated survey to experts in the field of road safety and the relationships among countries performance and the existing conditions potentially affecting research and funding will be studied.