Measuring and understanding road safety performance at local territorial level

Abstract

Road safety performance has traditionally been measured at national level, because the national authorities have assumed main responsibility for managing road safety of citizens. With the rise of EU governance, the role of national government has slightly decreased while the role of local authorities has been reinforced in many countries, creating a new playfield for policy actions. Assessing road safety performance at local territorial level may provide new inputs needed to trigger further improvements in road safety, as it brings about a higher accountability of policy makers and brings relevant issues closer to citizens. The measures and methods for such evaluation have now become broadly available and their application may bring a difference in current pace of road safety improvements. An example of the application of full Bayes spatio-temporal model on local road risk data is provided, illustrating the potential of local areal analysis for a better road safety management.

Introduction

Historically, cities and regions have played an essential role in the formation of national-states and national societies. Their inhabitants gave the sense to the notion of national identity, cultural norms and habits. The sense of social identity, citizen responsibility and respect of authorities which are acquired through active community life have then a great impact on the way how people obey the law. Since behaviour and compliance with traffic rules are the key determinants for the occurrence of road crashes, it is straightforward to seek how to improve compliance with law at local level, at which many behaviour-shaping mechanisms operate.

The European integration has contributed to a certain relaxation of the ‘constraints of state’ and cities and regions have emerged as one possible level for regulation of interests, groups and institutions. Several European countries have recently seen their governance systems decentralized. Decentralized governance systems tend to have stronger accountability mechanisms and lower corruption (Nas et al., 1986, Rose-Ackerman, 1999), which are the factors presumably related to compliance with road traffic law. Lederman et al. (2005) argue that decentralization leads to a higher accountability, since easier monitoring means less severe informational problems at local level. In countries with decentralized administrative power, employment of the least amount of special legal powers of the state compatible with the task to be performed, are sought (Hood and Schuppert, 1988) to bring power as close to people as possible. Moreover, local governments are directly responsive to their citizens needs but may be subject to capture by elites (Bardhan and Mookherjee, 2006).

A common feature of policy making in all so called SUN countries (Sweden, United Kingdom and the Netherlands, three countries with the best road safety record in the world) is a vital participation of civil society organized in associations and interest groups (Koornstra et al., 2002) and the proximity of policy making to citizens. These have a huge implication contributing to a higher accountability and responsiveness. It is indeed a common feature of road safety improvement strategies in countries with best road safety records not to rely on traditional top-down governance, in which actions at local level are governed exclusively from the national level to which they are subordinated. Specific arrangements and responsibility distributions could be tracked in SUN countries. While in the UK, the key areas of application were infrastructure improvements and traffic law enforcement including contracts between local police forces and local authorities on the number of checks of specific offences, in the Netherlands, the accountability was enhanced through the local transport plans, being regularly put under scrutiny by the central government. In Sweden, the local initiatives by civil society, companies and authorities were likely contributing to the improvements leading to its exceptional road safety record.

Alongside with the natural interest in local territories as areas of policy actions in road safety, there are several other motifs to put local territorial level at the centre of attention of contemporary road safety research. First, it can be claimed that European and national authorities have already used a great part of the potential for interventions. The EU has already passed legislation on driver licensing, properties of vehicles, and safety of infrastructure. National authorities have brought extensive legislation regarding road user behaviour, including tools for enhancing compliance with law, such as penalty point system. Fields of actions targeting citizens at local level have, at the same time, been left unexploited until now.

Beside, territories have recently become the trial fields of numerous advances in road safety research, such as intelligent transport system applications (e.g. intelligent speed adaptation, alcohol interlocks, or the shared-space urban road design concept).

To allow assessment to be made on the impact of these innovative concepts on road safety, there is a need for evaluation tools and techniques, which are reliable and robust, but at the same time simple and understandable. This contradiction is most likely the reason why assessment of road safety level is so rarely done at local level. However, exceptions exist and several observation and evidence based studies could be identified in the literature. Their authors realized that at specific cases, it is indeed more feasible to somewhat restrain the geographical area for running statistical analysis. For example Servadei et al. (2003) assessed the effect of Italy’s motorcycle helmet law on brain injuries performed at Romagna region and Farchi et al. (2007) assessed the effectiveness of the new penalty point system in Italy in Lazio region. Similarly, there are studies showing the evidence of differences in road users’ behaviour at sub-national level. For example, there are significant intra-national differences in terms of the usage rate of restraint systems between Italian (Taggi et al., 2006) or Swiss regions (Siegrist et al., 2006). Similarly, the prevalence of driving while intoxicated varies between regions of France, Italy or Spain.

To summarize, there is a growing interest in local territorial level as the area of various policy actions. There is also a great potential for road safety improvements through local policy actions, which should not be ignored. The thorough understanding of mechanisms and the availability of tools for the statistical analysis are the main prerequisites for allowing road safety practitioners to evaluate the effects of various policy measures applied at local level and give appropriate feedback to policy makers on the effectiveness of their actions.