Driving down the road toll by building a Safe System Professor Fred Wegman
Adelaide Thinker in Residence 2011 - 2012
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL Driving down the road toll by building a Safe System
Prepared by Professor Fred Wegman Adelaide Thinker in Residence 2011–2012
Table of Contents Executive Summary Introduction 1. A new vision for road safety in South Australia 2. Create conditions for implementing a Safe System approach 3. Understanding the problems and measuring progress 4. Actions and measures 5. Cultural change 6. Implementation
Department of the Premier and Cabinet C/O PO Box 2343 Adelaide SA 5001 June 2012 © All rights reserved - Crown - in right of the State of South Australia ISBN 978-0-9807470-8-9 www.thinkers.sa.gov.au
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL Premier’s Foreword Message from Jay Weatherill
Road accidents devastate communities. They take the lives of parents, of children, of brothers and sisters and friends, leaving behind heartache and broken lives.
Road safety initiatives are part of this Government’s commitment to maintaining safe communities. Drivers, passengers, pedestrians, motorcyclists and cyclists – all road users – are at the centre of the work we are doing to reduce the trauma on our roads.
South Australia has made some significant improvements in road safety over the past few decades. But there is more work to be done and more decisions to be taken in our road safety strategies as we tackle this ever-present issue.
That is why we invited Professor Fred Wegman to Adelaide as a Thinker in Residence. Professor Wegman is recognised as one of the world’s leading experts on road safety and his home country, the Netherlands, is one of the world leaders in road safety.
As part of his residency, Professor Wegman has already contributed significantly to our State’s Road Safety Strategy, Towards Zero Together. The strategy sets bold targets for achieving fewer deaths and serious injuries on our roads. The key to future improvement will be to adopt a safe system approach. This approach acknowledges that people make mistakes and poor choices on our road system, but that no death or serious injury is acceptable or inevitable, regardless of the circumstances.
Professor Wegman provides an honest appraisal in his final report. He sets ambitious targets for South Australia and provides a comprehensive list of recommendations that will guide road safety in this State for many years to come. He speaks about the need for a cultural change and the rejection of old stereotypes. This is something for which we all have to take responsibility - not just those involved in crashes or those who build and maintain the roads.
I encourage you to read Professor Wegman’s report and his recommendations. It will be an invaluable resource for future road safety initiatives in South Australia.
The Hon. Jay Weatherill Premier of South Australia
2 FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL PROFESSOR FRED WEGMAN
Professor Fred Wegman
Professor Fred Wegman is recognised as one of the world’s leading experts on road safety. Managing director of the SWOV Institute for Road Safety Research in the Netherlands from 1999–2009, Professor Wegman was the research director there for ten years prior to that, and a researcher before that. Founded in 1962, SWOV became one of the most respected research institutes on road safety in the world. SWOV’s mission is to improve road safety by developing and applying the results of scientific research.
Professor Wegman has been a part-time professor of traffic safety at the Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, since 2009. His academic work concentrates on developing a better understanding about why road crashes occur and how best to prevent them.
The Netherlands has managed to reduce the number of road crash fatalities by 80 per cent in the last four decades, while the number of kilometres travelled has tripled during the same period. The Netherlands is one of the best performing countries in the world in traffic safety with a mortality rate (fatalities per 100 000 inhabitants) 50 per cent lower than in South Australia.
Professor Wegman develops strategies to reach aspirational targets based on new visions for improving road safety. These visions started in the Netherlands with Sustainable Safety in the early 1990s, followed by Sweden’s Vision Zero — both of which were recently featured in an Organisation for Economic and Cooperation and Development (OECD) report on the Safe System Approach (OECD/ITF, 2008).
A member of a wide range of advisory boards, Professor Wegman is the chair of the IRTAD Group. IRTAD is the International Traffic Safety Data and Analysis Group. Working under the umbrella of the OECD/International Transport Forum, IRTAD operates a high-quality database on road safety, acts as a network for its members, and publishes research reports regularly. Its Annual Report (e.g. OECD/ITF, 2011a) describes (recent) road safety developments in its member states.
Professor Wegman’s current interests include improving road safety worldwide. The world is facing a road toll of catastrophic proportions with around 1.3 million people killed every year in traffic crashes, with a further 20–50 million people injured. It is expected that these numbers will increase if nothing is done. Around two million fatalities can be expected in 2020 according to the World Bank and the World Health Organization. Highly motorised countries, such as Australia and the European countries, may expect a further reduction in traffic casualties through implementing effective road safety policies, but further increases in the number of people killed and injured are expected in low and middle-income countries.
Partners in the residency:
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Senior Catalyst: Jeremy Woolley, Senior Research Fellow, CASR Catalyst: Hermann Rademeyer, Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 3 We must provide people with the surroundings in which the chance of human error is limited.
4 FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Introduction We must provide people with surroundings in which the chance of human error is limited
Much has been done to improve road safety in South Australia. Traditional stakeholders such as the police, road authorities and insurance agencies have invested considerable resources into tackling road safety problems and South Australia has good capability via the internationally recognised Centre for Automotive Safety Research (CASR). While the Safe System concept has been present in Australia for many years, its implementation still proves a challenge to everyone involved in road safety. This report discusses the findings of my residency and contains recommendations that will improve and build upon South Australia’s existing strong road safety base. Implementation of these recommendations will help move the State a step closer towards the adoption of Safe System principles and ultimately a greater reduction in deaths and injuries on our roads.
A new vision for road safety in South Australia
South Australia has made good progress in road safety over the past few decades through improvements to roads, safer vehicle design and efforts to improve road user behaviour. Although all are elements in the Safe System model, integrating the approach has not been truly successful. As the decline in deaths and injuries on South Australia’s roads levels out, more needs to be done. Road crashes are a tragedy for many families and communities and cost South Australia billions of dollars a year. Good investment in road safety is cost beneficial; preventing crashes and investing in prevention is cheaper for South Australia than the cost of road crashes.
It is my experience that many South Australians believe that the road safety problem is related to extreme behaviours: high levels of speeding or drink driving or illegal behaviour. While such behaviours are a problem requiring continued action, the majority of crashes occur to ordinary people making ordinary mistakes on the road network.
From my review of road safety in South Australia, I endorse the ongoing adoption of the Safe System approach adopted by many leading road safety countries, including the Netherlands. This approach starts from the understanding that road crashes resulting in death and injury are to a large extent predictable and preventable.
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 5 The Safe System approach is characterised by the following:
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I have identified three main tasks to explore these characteristics and adapt them to South Australian conditions. The first (establish a Taskforce) is the main recommendation of the residency: this Taskforce should create and define the conditions for a successful Safe System approach.
1.1 Establish a Taskforce under the leadership of the Premier supported by the Minister for Road Safety to design a strategy based on a Safe System approach and give guidance to the effective implementation of related action plans.
1.2 Integrate road safety into urban and regional planning and decision making processes; link road safety with actions arising from the Adelaide 30 year plan.
1.3 Review how road safety can be better incorporated into current traffic management practices and consider the role of road design and layout.
6 FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
An ambitious target for South Australia
There is no good reason why South Australia should not aim for the best when it comes to road safety. By adopting my recommendations and embracing the concept of a Safe System, I hope that South Australia will dramatically reduce the level of death and injury from road crashes, and at a much faster rate than in previous years.
South Australia is not the best performing road safety State in Australia, and Australia is not the best performing country in the world. South Australia consistently lags behind other states such as Victoria and New South Wales. A few European countries such as Sweden, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands have mortality rates (fatalities per 100 000 population) almost half that of the South Australian rate. Clearly there is much room for improvement.
The new Australian Road Safety Strategy, issued in 2011, works with a 30 per cent reduction of fatalities and injuries over a ten year period. This is a reasonable target. But should South Australia simply join this target, or can South Australia be more ambitious? I suggest that it should aim to catch up with the best performing state in Australia (currently Victoria) over the next decade. There is no good reason why South Australia should have a poorer record than any other jurisdiction in Australia.
If South Australia accepts this challenge, the target becomes a 50 per cent reduction in ten years. That is ambitious. Notably, the European Union had a target of 50 per cent reduction over 2000–2010 and countries such as France, Spain, and Portugal achieved it. With this in mind, why should South Australians accept a higher risk on the road than Victorians and the people of New South Wales?
The question then becomes: what should be done to aim for the best? I suggest that road safety experts be invited to consider a long list of potential road safety interventions, with good public consultation with South Australian communities to obtain support for implementation. Success will mean saving more lives than if traditional approaches are continued.
Understanding the problems and measuring progress
Traditionally there has been a strong focus on fatality crashes in road safety strategies. Injury crashes, however, are a major contributor to crash costs and deserve more attention. Improvements to the way crash costs are estimated in South Australia are required to provide better insight about who is carrying the cost burden. High quality data must be collected to enable analysis and monitoring of progress. What is collected as data may need to be improved. For example, when there is a crash we should also try to understand what is happening in terms of exposure: have the number of vehicles on the road increased, and are people driving for longer or over longer distances? It is important to understand as much of the road safety situation as possible and apply proven countermeasures based on good research evidence. Much can also be learnt by comparing the performance of South Australia to that of other states and countries and using that as a benchmark.
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 7 It is important that we understand as much of the road safety situation as possible and apply proven countermeasures based on good research evidence. I would like to suggest several actions to tackle the road safety problem more effectively and efficiently. For that reason, I recommend that an annual independent progress report be created for South Australia to monitor progress.
I have several recommendations in relation to understanding the problems and measuring progress:
2.1 Road safety data
There are several recommendations to improve road safety data in relation to crash data, exposure data, road safety performance indicators, road safety costs, benchmarking and monitoring.
2.2 Road safety and health
Better understand the synergies between health and road safety and explore opportunities to include road safety in health policies and health in road safety policies
2.3 Indigenous people
Further understand the circumstances and context of remote area crashes involving indigenous people and establish a demonstration project with SA Health to show ways in which road safety issues can be addressed in indigenous communities.
Actions and measures
It is not my intention to propose a detailed Action Plan for the State Road Safety Strategy. Rather I have created a list of areas that can be referenced over the coming years when developing future action plans and initiatives. These are based on my understanding of the South Australian road safety situation during my residency. Note that these recommendations do not imply that nothing has been done or is being done in these areas, they are designed as a comprehensive list of things for consideration to improve road safety in South Australia.
3.1 School education
3.1.1 Create a project to align current education programs with best practice principles.
3.1.2 Create a road safety resource centre to make it easier for schools to adopt best practice road safety programs.
3.2 Mass media and communication
3.2.1 Continue to coordinate road safety campaigns with other road safety activities such as enforcement.
3.2.2 Continue with evaluations of road safety campaigns based on behavioural outcome measures.
3.2.3 Further involve local communities in campaigns to enhance their effectiveness.
8 FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
3.3 Enforcement
3.3.1 Ensure that any new enforcement strategies articulate the role of general deterrence, specific deterrence and ways of dealing with extreme behaviours.
3.3.2 Utilise new technologies and intelligence/data analysis to maximise existing resources.
3.3.3 Ensure that enforcement activities are better integrated with mass media campaigns.
3.3.4 Conduct scientific evaluations of traffic enforcement to develop tools and a knowledge base to guide operations.
3.4 Safe roads
3.4.1 Review current guidelines and standards from a road safety perspective.
3.4.2 Integrate road safety into planning and design processes.
3.4.3 Assess the suitability of current road designs to nudge road users into adopting safer behaviours.
3.4.4 Develop a plan to retrofit road safety into the existing road network according to Safe System principles.
3.4.5 Align minimum standards of safety performance according to a functional road hierarchy.
3.4.6 Develop the case for eliminating Stobie poles from the road network.
3.5 Vehicles
3.5.1 Work with the Australian government to ensure that safety features are not removed from vehicles prior to sale in Australia.
3.5.2 Encourage fleet owners to purchase the safest vehicles for their employees.
3.5.3 Develop a scheme to ensure that novice drivers use the safest car available when driving.
3.5.4 Consider policies to achieve a 100 per cent rate for restraint use utilising emerging vehicle technologies.
3.6 Road safety technology
3.6.1 Create a Road Safety Technology Forum to nurture cooperation between key stakeholders.
3.6.2 Conduct a study to establish the scope for new technology implementations.
3.6.3 Establish demonstration projects using new technology.
3.7 Speed management
3.7.1 Establish a framework for the retrofitting of the network to support safe speeds and credible speed limits.
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 9 3.7.2 Conduct a review of speed limit setting procedures.
3.7.3 Conduct and evaluate demonstration projects that promote safe and credible speed limits in metropolitan and rural areas.
3.8 Novice drivers
3.8.1 Review if improving the quality of training and testing procedures can enhance current driver (and rider) training and licensing.
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3.8.3 Increase the minimum licensing age.
3.9 Older drivers
Review the requirement to annually test motor vehicle license holders from the age of 70 years. Consideration should be given to programs that discuss awareness of, and compensation for, declining ability as drivers age, including alternatives to driving.
3.10 Unlicensed drivers
Conduct research to better understand the problem of unlicensed driving and identify factors behind individual circumstances, motivation and choices.
3.11 Cyclists
3.11.1 Create a second generation cycle network that links isolated cycling infrastructure installed over the past decade.
3.11.2 Establish a demonstration project to create two major routes across the CBD for cyclists for north/south and east/west movements based on “Vancouver” style cycling lanes.
3.11.3 Create a cycling demonstration project — access to public transport and shops based on the potential to use bicycles for short trips (less than 7km).
3.12 Motorcyclists/scooters
Develop a comprehensive strategy to reduce the risks of motorised two wheelers.
3.13 Heavy vehicles
3.13.1 Develop a vision to bring the highest safety standards to the professional heavy vehicle sector at all levels of operation.
3.13.2 Adopt traffic management techniques that facilitate the safe driving of heavy vehicles in urban areas.
3.14 Alcohol and drugs
3.14.1 Continue research into the issue of recidivists with high levels of blood alcohol concentration (BAC).
10 FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
3.14.2 Monitor European activities in establishing an evidence base in relation to drug driving.
3.14.3 Conduct further research to understand the driving risks associated with combining alcohol and drugs.
3.14.4 Make a further analysis of the problem of intoxicated pedestrians as a basis for focussed policies.
3.15 Distraction
3.15.1 Encourage public and private organisations to prohibit the use of hands-free mobile phones whilst driving as a safety based policy.
3.15.2 Create campaigns to highlight the fact that even hands-free mobile phone use whilst driving elevates risk.
3.15.3 Explore activities in relation to other in-car devices, such as navigation systems.
3.16 Fatigue
3.16.1 The Safety Technology Forum (see recommendation 3.6.1) should consider the adoption of vehicle technologies for detecting driver fatigue.
3.16.2 Conduct further research to establish the prevalence of sleep disorders in long distance driving in South Australia.
A need for cultural change
South Australia needs cultural change in its approach to road safety. Road safety needs to become integral to decision making. While road safety can be improved using the traditional approaches of making existing roads safer, using safer vehicles and improving human behaviour through education and enforcement, we need to acknowledge that humans make mistakes, and some deliberately violate traffic laws. We must manage the road system with these things in mind and create an environment that ‘nudges’ people towards adopting the best behaviours: it is no longer good enough to blame the road user for all the consequences. We have an ethical obligation to create an environment where people are not punished by death and injury for their mistakes. This will require cultural change by the public, all sides of politics and all stakeholders.
I recommend the following actions in relation to cultural change:
4.1 The public
Conduct further social research to understand the cultural elements that form opinions on road safety based on a framework similar to the American Automobile Association compendium on a safe driving culture.
4.2 Politicians
4.2.1 Create a climate of genuine bipartisan support for road safety.
4.2.2 Build political and administrative support for evidence led decision making in road safety.
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 11 4.3 Stakeholders
4.3.1 Conduct social research into the boundaries between personal responsibility and stakeholder responsibility. Insights from this can be used to better target private sector involvement.
4.3.2 Make stakeholders accountable for their contribution to reach the South Australian road safety target.
Implementation
The successful implementation of countermeasures and changes in pursuit of our road safety vision is certainly difficult. We cannot just go to a store and select countermeasures off a shelf and hope they will work. We must fine tune and adapt the countermeasures for the South Australian context. The following recommendations will enhance South Australia’s ability to do this, build upon current expertise and strengthen organisations that currently perform good work in road safety.
5.1 Multi stakeholder alignment
Ensure the next road safety strategy for South Australia is a stakeholder strategy — not only containing actions and responsibilities for government departments.
5.2 Cooperation
5.2.1 Work with other jurisdictions to coordinate road safety policy.
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5.2.3 Explore at all levels the ways in which South Australia can benefit by cooperating with other international organisations involved in road safety.
5.3 Strengthening local authorities
5.3.1 Encourage local government to take more of an interest and active role in road safety.
5.3.2 Consider the role of local government in contributing to road safety education in local schools.
5.3.3 Develop more formal protocols for communication with the police to optimise intelligence for traffic enforcement purposes and include feedback for local government.
5.3.4 Establish a resource unit to allow local government to obtain assistance in implementing a Safe System.
5.3.5 Require local government to develop road safety action plans over the next decade.
5.3.6 Mandate the reporting of road safety statistics in annual reports.
12 FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
5.4 Capacity building and knowledge transfer
5.4.1 Train and attract new dedicated professionals in the field of road safety in South Australia and resource the state’s universities to make further efforts in this area.
5.4.2 Develop courses for professional road safety training, seek opportunities to strengthen undergraduate training of professionals in road safety and engage further in postgraduate training.
5.4.3 Allocate resources for a centre for knowledge transfer and capacity building to be established at CASR.
5.5 Private sector involvement
5.5.1 Initiate a study to identify the range of ways in which cooperation can occur with private industry to adopt road safety policies and conduct demonstration projects amongst different sectors. Consider how to promote adoption of the safest vehicles, banning of hands-free mobile phone use whilst driving, monitoring of driver behaviour in company vehicles, and consequences for employees caught drink driving in the private sector.
5.5.2 Conduct demonstration projects amongst organisations in different sectors to promote road safety culture.
5.5.3 Explore circumstances in which private companies would be willing to contribute towards road safety initiatives for communities (e.g. in rural and remote areas).
5.6 Strengthening research
5.6.1 Explore opportunities for scientific cooperation with interstate research organisations with a focus on Safe System principles and their practical applications.
5.6.2 Improve the academic standing of CASR by reconsidering the balance between core scientific research, project based research and knowledge transfer activities. Core research could also receive further support from the University of Adelaide.
5.6.2 Identify opportunities to strengthen research centres amongst the three public universities and continue with efforts towards cooperative research.
5.6.3 Require and facilitate CASR to produce more independent road safety progress reports and reviews for South Australia. To conclude
Given the extent of our current road safety knowledge and the performance of the leading road safety countries in Europe there is certainly a case for South Australia to set some ambitious targets and continue to implement a Safe System approach to road safety. By taking this path, more personal tragedies amongst families and communities will be prevented than would have otherwise been the case. However, to do so we need a shift in our road safety culture, not only amongst individual road users, but on all sides of politics, and across the public service, the private sector and entire communities. My recommendations will enhance existing capabilities and activities in road safety and take South Australia a step closer towards realising a true Safe System. FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 13 We have learned over the years that road crashes are to a large extent predictable and preventable.
14 FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL ÊÊÊ," Ê- /9Ê Ê-"1/Ê1-/, \Ê/ Ê Ê Ê Ê
1. Road safety in South Australia: the challenge
More than 180 000 people have been killed in road crashes on Australian roads since the start of motorisation around the 1920s and more than 2.5 million people sustained serious injuries. To put things into perspective, the number of people killed in the September 11th terrorist attack in New York in 2001 was 2753; the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria in 2009 resulted in 173 deaths and 28 South Australians perished in the Ash Wednesday bushfires of 1983.
These astonishing road trauma figures go beyond imagination. Although individual risks are relatively low per trip, and everybody expects to arrive safely, road crashes have a major impact on societies, on communities, on families and on individuals. Nobody is immune from road crashes. I once wrote a report titled Everybody knows someone … in which I tried to make it clear that road crashes influenced, in one way or another, every individual in his or her lifetime. Everybody knows a family member, relative or friend, someone from the same community or a well-known public figure killed in a road crash. In addition, ten times more than those killed are being injured in road crashes.
Road crashes are not just statistics, although statistics are helping us to understand the bigger picture. Road crashes cost society an enormous amount of money. Figure 1.1 shows a conservative estimate of road safety costs based on the human capital method. We know that with more appropriate techniques under development (such as Willingness to Pay) these costs will be much higher. In developed countries, costs can reach up to three per cent of the Gross Domestic Product. It is always interesting to find out who is paying this bill. It is incorrect to think
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 15 that all costs are covered because we have individual insurance. This is only part of the picture. Road crash costs are also paid for by the community, private companies and the government.
We have learned over the years that road crashes are to a large extent predictable and preventable. We have gained a good body of knowledge about the causes of crashes and how best to prevent them. In many highly motorised countries, remarkable progress has been made in reducing the number of people killed and injured in road crashes (OECD/ITF, 2011a), despite increased mobility. Clearly, increasing mobility is no excuse for an increase in crashes or casualties. The challenge ahead is to use the accumulated knowledge about preventable crashes to stop them. Predominantly, we can do that by investing in the prevention of crashes and in a reduction in their seriousness. Investment by the government is required, but not exclusively. Government investments are a matter of political priority setting and, consequently, may fall short of that required to achieve an optimal level of improvement. Investment in road safety must change the risk involved in using the road and, thus, must change human behaviour. While road users are responsible for their own behaviour, it is a task of government, along with other stakeholders, to create the conditions to reduce risks. We can put my perspective in more direct words — people are unnecessarily dying or become injured in preventable road crashes. Our challenge is to change this.
Figure 1.1 Economic cost of road crashes in Australia by component cost based on the Human Capital method, 2006 (BITRE, 2010)
Year after year road safety in many highly motorised jurisdictions has improved, and South Australia is no exception. I see it as my task to contribute towards accelerating this progress. This report is based on a lot of knowledge and evidence, and I trust that implementation of the recommendations will lead to a reduction in fatalities and injuries at a higher rate than in the past.
16 FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL ÊÊÊ," Ê- /9Ê Ê-"1/Ê1-/, \Ê/ Ê Ê Ê Ê
Road crashes in South Australia
I decided not to include a full analysis of road crashes in South Australia in this report. These analyses are already available and I have studied them carefully. They were produced by the Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure (DPTI), by the police and by universities (e.g. CASR). They led me to two conclusions.
The first conclusion is that the road safety problem in South Australia is not fundamentally different from those in other highly motorised countries. Crashes are distributed over traffic modes, different age groups, and different locations. Road crashes are dominated by the involvement of motor vehicles. We can observe an incompatibility between transport modes with ‘vulnerable road users’ as a natural consequence, such as pedestrians, cyclists and powered two-wheelers (motorcyclists). Young and novice drivers run a higher risk than more experienced drivers, elderly drivers are ‘at risk’, drinking and driving results in an increased risk, traffic on freeways run a lower risk than on rural and urban roads, motorised two-wheelers run a relatively high risk. Speed(ing) and drink driving are dominant factors. These higher risks are measured all over the world.
My second conclusion relates to the distribution of crashes. The geographical distribution of crashes in South Australia is, of course, different compared with more densely populated countries. For example, because of the high density of activities in the Netherlands, we built a dense motorway (freeway) network and, as a result, quite a proportion (50 per cent) of motorised vehicle kilometres is carried by high- quality motorways. This is an important reason for the relatively low fatality rate in the Netherlands. This motorway network is safe (low fatality rates) and somewhat separated from the other roads and streets. The density of activities in South Australia is low, with the exception perhaps of the Adelaide metropolitan area. For historical reasons, Adelaide has hardly any freeways and high volumes of traffic are carried by regular roads with hardly any access control and no grade separation. Of course road safety problems in rural and remote areas are completely different from the problems in the Adelaide metropolitan area. However, it is my impression that this results only in another distribution of problems. The majority of serious crashes occur in the Greater Adelaide area and the risks (casualties per kilometre driven) in rural and remote areas will be higher than in Adelaide.
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 17 Furthermore, these rural and remote problems have their own characteristics and the nature of these problems is not fully identical with rural problems elsewhere in the world. The Metropolitan Adelaide problem is not very different from problems in metropolitan areas in other parts of the world.
These two conclusions (similar safety problems in South Australia when compared with other highly motorised countries, but with different distribution of crashes) guided me to my approach: learn from other countries and jurisdictions, specifically from the best- performing Australian States, and adapt best practices to the local conditions in South Australia. I call this an evidence-based approach.
When reading reports on road safety analyses in South Australia, one result struck me, and that was the answer to the question: why are crashes occurring? This simple answer was repeated many times: because the individual road user violated the law or made a stupid mistake. In almost all crashes, the human being could be blamed. Although this way of thinking was not unknown to me, I was surprised that this appeared to be the dominant way of thinking in South Australia: expressed by decision makers, the media and the public. This answer (‘blame the driver’) is not my answer — see also my Westminster iVÌÕÀiÊÊ/À>ëÀÌÊ->viÌÞÊ7i}>]ÊÓä£ä®°ÊÊà >ÊViÊL>VÊÌÊÞÊÛiÜÊÊÌ ÃÊÊ Chapter 2.
Comparing the road safety record of South Australia
Comparing the safety record of South Australia with the other States and Territories in Australia (Figure1.2), we can conclude that South Australia takes a lower position in the league with a mortality rate of just over 6 per 100 000 people in 2011. Among the larger jurisdictions, Victoria and New South Wales lead the way.
Figure 1.2 Fatalities per 100 000 population by State and Territory in 2011 (BITRE 2011)
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Furthermore, it is of relevance to learn that there are a few countries in Europe with far better records. Mortality rates for many highly motorised countries are tabled in Figure 1.3. In the so-called SUNflower countries — Sweden, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands (Koornstra et al., 2002; Wegman et al., 2005) — mortality rates are half that of the South Australian rate. These countries are not similar to each other in many respects and neither their safety problems nor their solutions are identical. However, these three countries have achieved similar levels of safety through continuing planned improvements over recent decades. Policy areas targeted have been similar, but implementation of policies has differed at a detailed level (Koornstra et al., 2002).
Figure 1.3 Fatalities per 100 000 population for highly motorised countries (OECD/ITF, 2011a)
The good news is that South Australia has made a lot of progress over the years (Figure 1.4), with fatalities reducing from 154 in 2001 to 118 in 2010, and serious injuries reducing from 1605 in 2001 to 1050 in 2010. Although it looks as if we have to acknowledge some sort of stagnation over the last couple of years, my modelling work using a longer time period told me another result: we still have a downward trend in South Australia. If we focus ourselves on the last couple of years, however, we cannot escape from the impression that we aren’t making a lot of progress.
Figure 1.4 Fatalities and serious injuries in South Australia, 1980 to 2010 (Anderson, 2012)
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 19 The number of road crashes, fatalities and injuries is considered unacceptably high in many countries, even where great progress has been made and relatively low levels of mortality rates have been achieved, such as the SUNflower countries. Recently the European Union stated that it would aim to halve the number of fatalities in ten years’ time, starting from 2010. I consider this to be a brave goal. Not because countries in the European countries were not able to reach a similar target of 50 per cent reduction over 2000–2010 — the measured reduction was 43 per cent, a more than fantastic result with many underperforming countries of the past such as France, Spain and Portugal making great progress — but because such reductions require a strong policy focus and high levels of investment. High goals still have to be translated into ambitious, realistic and effective road safety strategies (ETSC, 2010). It is always interesting to learn from other countries and to see why progress was made.
Unfortunately, we cannot come to a similar type of conclusion for (serious) injuries. Good analysis is obstructed by data quality problems; problems coming from a lack of harmonisation of definitions internationally and from poor registration of injury crashes by the police. However, a key question for South Australia is: why have we made such progress since the mid-eighties?
Road safety policies in South Australia in the past
Professor Ian Johnston, former director of the Monash University Accident Research Centre (MUARC), reviewed the success of Australia in bringing down the road toll and he used Victoria, his home state, as a case for his study (2006). Interestingly enough, Johnston does not give a long list of interventions to explain why the number of fatalities went down from almost 800 road deaths in 1989 to around 300 in 2004. An explanation like that is hardly possible using a scientific yardstick. Instead, he describes four critical success factors: a sound and realistic plan, political and bureaucratic leadership, integrated implementation and ‘enabling factors’. The first three may be somewhat self-explanatory; the fourth one is certainly not. These enabling factors can be considered as insightful observations from an insider.
The first enabler is that a history of success creates a political willingness to act. Here we enter the world of communication between policymakers and decision makers and the trust needed to take controversial decisions. If a decision maker can trust a policymaker — based on earlier experiences — it might be easier to make the next decision. A similar line of trust can be created between the research community and policymakers. The second enabler is a climate in which scientific evaluations of interventions are routine and these evaluations are trusted and taken seriously. Through extensive public education, traffic safety programs have been instrumental in creating a climate of community concern for road safety and support for effective interventions. As a last enabler, the role of the media is mentioned. Johnston observes that the media has been supportive of effective interventions in Victoria and this support facilitated political willingness to act.
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All these observations are interesting for South Australia. A playing field, or arena, as described by Johnston, also exists in South Australia. It would be of interest to see how the main stakeholders act and cooperate (and trust each other) with an improved road safety record as a result. These stakeholders are the communities, political decision makers, policymakers, the research community and the media. I suggest adding to this other major institutional stakeholders, such as the Royal Automobile Association (RAA), the Motor Accident Commission (MAC), schools and the health sector. It is my opinion that it would be worthwhile to invest in this cooperation and to orchestrate communication carefully, keeping every stakeholder aligned with their own responsibility, but having a general goal in mind: reducing the road toll.
As stated, Johnston does not claim that safety interventions can explain the progress made in Victoria. This is not an easy task at all. The main reason is that many interventions are not well monitored, are rather small, are not implemented in isolation and are not well researched (no control groups for example, or no control for confounding factors). However, it is more than plausible that several interventions, as implemented in South Australia, contributed to the positive developments in this State. We can make this statement, for example, if we combine two facts: an increase in seat-belt wearing (measured in South Australia) and the relationship between seat-belt wearing and risks iÃÌ>LÃ i`ÊiÃiÜ iÀiÊÊÌ iÊÜÀ`ÊÜÌ Ê}`ÊÃViÌwVÊiÛ`iVi®°Ê*ÀviÃÃÀÊ>VÊ V i>]Ê the first director of CASR at the University of Adelaide, went back through his personal history and produced an amazingly long list of the many activities and interventions in South Australia over the years. Although we don’t have sound, scientific proof for all their impacts, I can predict that many, if not all, of these interventions made a positive contribution to road safety in South Australia.
The challenge for South Australia
Aiming for improving road safety and reducing the number of crashes, fatalities and injuries, is a challenge at whatever rate is achieved. Sometimes people think that road crashes are an inevitable consequence of our mobility. We have a lot of evidence now that this view is not true. Sometimes people think that we are too complacent and simply do not act enough to reduce the public health crisis on the roads. If we compare South Australia with other countries and jurisdictions, I believe that more can be done to reduce the road toll, although I am impressed by the progress made in the last few decades. In making the next steps, I recommend that the Government not only list some additional new road safety measures, as has been done successfully in the past, but also try to change our way of thinking about road safety and to transform our culture. We need to move from a culture of more or less accepting the loss of life and limb as an inevitable price of our modern mobility, towards a culture in which we refuse to accept the safety problems of today and really believe that we can reduce fatalities and injuries drastically, if not eliminate the problem. This requires a cultural change in South Australia and this change is the real challenge. Cultural change has different, related components and I think this subject is important enough to have a separate chapter (Chapter 6). I have identified three key players: the public, politicians and all stakeholders in road safety.
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 21 First of all, it is important to understand how the South Australian public perceives driving culture, the role of the automobile in our society and the problem of road crashes. All these perceptions are interrelated and we know too little about them. Without doubt, a driving culture influences driving behaviour and our acceptance of road safety measures. How this culture, or better, these cultures, give a strong basis for further improvements on road safety, or should be considered as a serious hindrance, is not well studied — I recommend that we do this. If we have a good understanding about safety culture, we can bring in ‘social marketing’ to create public support for road safety interventions. Mass media plays a key role here, because it distributes all sorts of driving-related information to the public. For that reason I consider the media as ‘stakeholders’ in road safety.
It is a known fact that leadership is essential to bring about (cultural) changes in our societies and many people, such as myself, expect from our political leaders a genuine passion on certain parts of their responsibilities/portfolio to support these changes. We look for individual leaders who are willing to position themselves as road safety champions. When I learned about the large number of road safety ministers South Australia has had over the last couple of years, my conclusion was simple: this is not good for road safety! Political priority setting and a passion for a subject are related and you need some incubation time to make yourself effective. Besides a ‘road safety minister’ or any other champion, we need other elected officials, such as members of the Cabinet and town councils, to deal with this problem. I strongly support the idea of ‘Road Safety in All Policies’, similar to the approach Professor Ilona Kickbusch gave to Health, as an earlier Thinker in Residence (Kickbusch, 2010). Only then we can escape from the traditional ‘road safety silo’ and cross traditional boundaries. I support this idea, not only conceptually (we can draft better policies), but also because that will deliver a solid basis for the shared- responsibility approach — no one person (or organisation) can be made responsible for everything (even a real champion cannot ever do that). Others have to accept their role as well: shared responsibility.
A third element of this safety culture deals with the transport, road and safety professionals. They can create conditions for successful implementation using a broad base of partnership. Their culture should be more ‘results focused’ in my opinion and we have to make them more accountable for their performance. This ‘implementation’ based on effective institutional processes deserves a separate chapter as well in my report. It is Chapter 7.
Target setting for South Australia: aim for the best
From a democratic and political point of view, and from a road safety management point of view, it became a good habit in many countries to come up with quantitative road safety targets. The aim is to have a transparent goal, which is easy to monitor and, based on that, easy to decide whether progress is still on track, or that additional interventions should be considered. Many countries do have experience in working with quantitative targets. Several researchers have tried to associate setting of quantified road safety targets with road fatality reduction (see for example a recent scientific article by Allsop et al., 2011). Based on a comparison of the performances of countries with and without a road safety target, the authors conclude that countries working with a target perform better, with an estimate of about ten per cent greater road fatality reduction.
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However, we can observe some differences between countries: for Australia, policies based on a targeted approach resulted in a five per cent reduction (compared with countries with no target); for my own country, the Netherlands, we measured a 20 per cent reduction. We have to be fair to ourselves in admitting that setting targets and understanding why we reached certain targets is not a mature area of research. We have increased our knowledge considerably over the years, but it is not a ‘law of physics’ which has been confirmed again and again. Road safety is developing itself in an always-changing world and we don’t fully understand the underlying forces and developments yet. From this perspective, I don’t consider it fair to invite politicians to take the political consequences of not reaching a road safety target, unless it can be demonstrated that promises to act were not held. So, in my opinion, failing to reach a road safety target should not be considered as political failure. Besides this, I hold the opinion that road safety will develop itself better if it receives bi-partisan support (see also Chapter 7). Target setting has an enormous advantage: it will keep road safety on the political agenda as long as the target date has not yet expired. Some people say that if a target has been met earlier than the expiry date, and more progress has been made than anticipated, it will reduce political interest. That can be the case. However, allow me to give an example from my own country, the Netherlands. We set a target of a maximum of 580 fatalities in 2020. We made more progress than anticipated and it was proposed to tighten the target to a maximum of 500 fatalities in 2020. This was accepted by decision makers and politicians.
The second good reason for working with a target is that it is essential from a road safety management perspective. Road safety management is impossible without working with a target. The reason is that you never know whether enough efforts are being made. Bliss and Breen (2009) introduced the concept of ‘results focus’. A country’s results focus can be interpreted as a pragmatic specification of its ambition to improve road safety and the means agreed to achieve this (Bliss & Breen, 2009). The authors state:
Results focus in its ultimate expression concerns a strategic orientation and links all actual and potential interventions with results, analyses what can be achieved over time and sets out a performance management framework for the delivery of interventions and their intermediate and final outcome. It defines the level of safety that a country wishes to achieve, expressed in terms of a vision, goals, objectives and related targets (Bliss and Breen, 2008).
I support this statement and this is the place to start a discussion on South Australia’s ambitions for road safety and how to translate the ambitions into a road safety target.
The new Australian Road Safety Strategy works with a 30 per cent reduction over a ten year period (Australian Transport Council (ATC), 2011). This is a reasonable target; however, we cannot say that this is an ambitious target. Should South Australia simply adopt this target, or can South Australia be more ambitious? I recommend that a target of catching up with the best performing state in Australia (currently Victoria) over the next decade is set. The rationale is that I don’t see a good reason why South Australians should have a poorer record than other jurisdictions, or why it couldn’t be the best performing one.
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 23 Figure 1.5 shows targets of a 30 per cent reduction, consistent with the National Strategy. The best performing European countries are also shown for contrast.
Figure 1.5 Fatality rates of the leading European countries with that of SA, NSW and Victoria
In Figure 1.6, the implications of a 50 per cent reduction for South Australia to catch up with the best performing State (Victoria) are shown.
Figure 1.6 Change in fatality rates required for SA to catch up with Victoria
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I fully understand that a 50 per cent reduction in ten years’ time will be a real challenge, because we have to perform better than in the past, as can be seen in Figure 1.6. The South Australian slope between 2010–2020 must be steeper than 1999–2009 and must be steeper than the expected improvements in Victoria and NSW. However, once more, why should South Australians accept a higher risk on the roads than Victorians and the people of New South Wales? This is also the same target as the one set by the European Union for the period 2000–2010 and for 2010–2020. As we can see, even if this ambitious target is reached, South Australia will remain way behind the best performing countries in the world such as the SUN-countries (see Figure 1.3).
However, to be fair, we cannot only be ambitious — we have to be realistic as well. This leads to the question of: what should we do to aim for the best? My recommendation is that some modelling work be conducted to demonstrate what this would mean in terms of necessary countermeasures and investments. Whatever we might consider, any investments should be cost effective: the costs of interventions should be lower than the anticipated savings. A sound methodology should be developed for this modelling work and this methodology and its results should be accepted by decision makers. Knowledge and data is needed in order to deliver good quality and meaningful results for decision making. I recommend that this modelling work be carried out locally so a good level of expertise is built in South Australia. It goes without saying that it is extremely important to gain responses from the South Australian public to the results of this modelling and try to get their support.
I recommend that new targets be set, not only for the number of fatalities, but also for the number of serious injuries. The first and most important reason for this is that injuries represent a substantial proportion of the costs of road crashes. Second, from analyses of road crashes, it is clear that contributory factors to fatal crashes differ from contributory factors to injury crashes, and fatal crashes are poor predictors for injury crashes. Third, the impact of severe injuries from crashes on families and communities can be considerable.
South Australia has quite a challenge ahead. Successes in the past don’t predict successes in the future. We have to invest in traditional measures, but also in new opportunities. Without these new investments, no further progress can be expected. The Safe System approach provides an attractive perspective and, based on this, we can be ambitious. Being ambitious is about investing in a wide variety of potential improvements, based on sound research, and seeing which ones are most successful. Being ambitious is worth it!
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 25 A crash is rarely caused by one single unsafe action. It is usually preceded by a whole chain of poorly attuned occurences.
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2. A new vision for road safety in South Australia
Road crashes occur frequently everywhere and anybody can be involved in a crash. Serious crashes are reported in the media, we are aware of dangerous intersections and most of us know someone who was killed or injured in a crash. On the other hand, serious crashes are rare events and they are diluted over time and space. Crashes have a variety of causes. A lot of research tells us that, in almost all crashes, human error can be seen as a prevalent factor in up to 90–95 per cent of the crashes. Sometimes human error is intentional: a person violates a law, or doesn’t adapt enough to the prevailing conditions. On the other hand, an incapable person can make unintentional errors, sometimes resulting in a crash. I think that we have enough evidence to state that both types of errors occur, and therefore both types of errors deserve our attention. Unfortunately, we don’t have a clear picture yet of the relative contribution of intentional errors/violations and unintentional errors to crashes. However, recent studies using unobtrusive ways of observing driving behaviour (naturalistic driving studies as carried out in the US and in Europe) indicate that unintentional errors are involved in the majority of crashes.
When I arrived in South Australia, I investigated how the phenomenon of causes of crashes was perceived. I found that discussion about this was dominated by intentional errors only, more specifically violations and traffic offences. South Australian crash statistics told us that, in one third of all fatal crashes, drivers had a BAC above the legal limit; not wearing a seat belt, or excessive speed was reported frequently as well. This picture was made even more extreme: quite a proportion of drivers involved in a crash had a previous crash history (in which they were at fault), had a previous driving offence history, or even a criminal history. A new English word entered my English vocabulary: hoon-driving. This is defined on the DPTI website:
Hoon-driving causes a vehicle to travel at very high speed or in a manner that produces burnouts and doughnuts. Dangerous driving, careless driving, failure to have proper control of the vehicle and causing the vehicle to make excessive noise or smoke are also considered hoon-related offences if they are committed in circumstances involving the improper use of a motor vehicle.
Those who were involved in a crash were criminalised. I learned that the dominant opinion was to at least blame the driver involved in a crash, if not criminalising the driver. Two conclusions were presented to me: the first was that the road safety problem can be improved by better
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 27 detecting hoon behaviour and changing it, with the most powerful way of doing that being more severe punishments. The second conclusion: the road safety problem is only related to this selected group of drivers and not to anyone else.
My understanding of a road crash is different from the view I encountered. I thought that there could be a few explanations for this unexpected view, so my first inclination was to ask researchers from CASR to help me in understanding the nature of road crashes in South Australia and try to explain why these causes were different from what I had learned from other parts of the world, such as Europe and North America. Not unexpectedly, the CASR researchers confirmed my expectations (Wundersitz and Baldock, 2010). They used a data set compiled from the Coroner’s reports of fatal crashes in 2008 with information from their own in-depth crash investigations of non-fatal crashes. I asked the researchers to categorise road crashes into three groups: the first, in which extreme behaviour could be identified (high level speeding and drink driving); the second in which illegal behaviour could be found (such as travelling above the speed limit or an illegal BAC) but not what is regarded as extreme behaviour; and the third in which extreme or illegal behaviour could not be found. The last group consisted of ordinary road users, having more or less ordinary behaviour. I call this group ‘system failure’, in which well-intentioned road users have a crash because of some sort of human error.
The study showed that the often expressed opinion that crashes are only, or mainly, caused by antisocial road users who grossly disregard all rules, cannot be confirmed by South Australian data (Table 2.1).
One other important result of comparisons like this is mentioned here. If we make the same distinction for injury crashes, a similar, but more pronounced picture emerges. The distribution is up to ten per cent extreme behaviour and close to 90 per cent ordinary behaviour. In other words: injury crashes are telling a different story from fatal crashes. This means that we cannot rely only on fatal crash data when formulating road safety strategies. We need to include injury crash analysis as well. As I recommend paying more attention to injury crashes in South Australian policies in the future, this new focus may open new avenues for policymaking when formulating road safety strategies which include reducing traffic injuries.
Data source Extreme Illegal system System behaviour (%) failure (%) failure (%)
Fatal crashes 2008 43.4 22.9 33.7
Non-fatal metropolitan injury crashes 2002-2005 3.3 9.9 86.8
Non-fatal rural crashes 1998-2000 9.4 16.6 74.0
Table 2.1 Proportion of crashes based on extreme behaviour or system failure (Wundersitz & Baldock, 2011)
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As I have previously discussed, a crash is rarely caused by one single unsafe action. It is usually preceded by a whole chain of poorly attuned occurrences. This implies that, if we consider interventions, a whole range of causes and contributory factors could, and should, be taken into account.
We seldom witness a road crash, and, to understand the causes of a crash, we have to rely on (silent) witnesses by carrying out, for example, a crash reconstruction. Causes of crashes are not easy to find this way. We relied on police information in the past, which was written down on crash report forms. These forms focus on violations, in order to assist with police activities, as they are supposed to do. However, based on road safety studies all over the world, more specifically in-depth studies, we have learned that, in the majority of crashes, more than one cause played a role. These studies always result in a conclusion that the human being failed in one way or another. This leads to three questions: which factors increase risk, how can we influence these factors to reduce risk, and how cost- effective are these interventions? These three questions have to be answered over the life of the South Australia Road Safety Strategy and Action Plans.
Based on this analysis, I have defined two main directions/orientations for further improvement:
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ÊUÊÊVÀi>Ì}Ê>Ê->viÊ-ÞÃÌiÊÊÜ V Ê Õ>ÊiÀÀÀÃÊ>ÀiÊVÃ`iÀ>LÞÊÀi`ÕVi`]ÊvÊÌÊ eliminated
The second approach has a positive impact on the first. Assume we build cars in the future with a seat-belt lock and an intelligent speed adaptor, in which it will be impossible to drive without proper use of a seat belt and with no opportunity to drive faster than the prevailing speed limit. We will not have to rely on the traditional ways of improving driving behaviour, such as police enforcement. As we don’t have these locks (yet) and we are not sure whether they will ever become a standard feature in future cars, we cannot rule out this first line of thinking.
Following this line of thinking, there is sufficient research to establish a link between traffic offences and numbers of crashes. It is equally well-known that a road user who has been fined for an offence adapts their behaviour for some time, often a few months. Traffic enforcement supports and improves traffic behaviour, but research also tells us that the positive effect of enforcement is not so much the result of the behavioural changes in those who have been fined — that effect is limited — but is rather because of the preventive effect of the possibility of being fined and the punishment that comes with it: we call this last effect the general deterrence effect of police enforcement. The first effect (safer behaviour of fined persons) is called specific deterrence. Smart policing and communication about that policing can create powerful and credible general deterrence.
Going back to the question why do crashes still occur, it might be interesting to take a small diversion. We can learn from other human activities to understand why crashes occur and how best to prevent them. James Reason (1990) from the United Kingdom wrote an influential book on human error. His findings came from cognitive ergonomics, based in industrial safety and aviation, but can certainly be applied to road traffic crashes.
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 29 The diagram developed by Reason, sometimes referred to as the ‘Swiss Cheese Model’, has been adapted to road safety (Wegman & Aarts, 2004) and shows different slices of cheese (see Figure 2.1). These screens have different hiatuses, illustrated by holes in the screens. A hole is also called a latent error and, in isolation, is not necessarily a «ÀLi°Ê >ÌiÌÊiÀÀÀÃÊÃÌ>ÀÌÊÌÊLiViÊ>Ê«ÀLiÊÌ iÊiÌÊÌ iÞÊ>ÜÊvÀÊ>ÊV >Ê vÊiÛiÌÃ]Ê`i«VÌi`ÊLÞÊ>Ê>ÀÀÜÊÊÌ iÊw}ÕÀi°Ê >ÌiÌÊiÀÀÀÃÊÊÌ iÊ>ÃÌÊÌÜÊÃVÀiiÃÊ>ÀiÊ called dangerous actions (by road users). We can even say that holes in the psychological precursor screen can be considered as dangerous actions; for example, being intoxicated or fatigued. The arrow in the diagram is a good illustration of chain of events leading to a crash.
As an example, the latent errors associated with the chain of events that result in a crash could be: Ê UÊ -ÞÃÌiÊ`iÃ}ÊÊ>ÊL>`ÊVÀiÀ Ê UÊ +Õ>ÌÞÊ>ÃÃÕÀ>ViÊÊÌ iÊL>`ÊVÀiÀÊÜ>ÃÊÌÊ`iÌwi`Ê`ÕÀ}Ê>ÊÀ>`ÊÃ>viÌÞÊ>Õ`Ì Ê UÊ *ÃÞV }V>Ê«ÀiVÕÀÃÀÃÊÊ>Êv>Ì}Õi`Ê`ÀÛiÀ Ê UÊ VÌÃÊ`ÕÀ}ÊÌÀ>vwVÊ«>ÀÌV«>ÌÊÊ`ÀvÌÃÊvvÊÌ iÊÀ>`ÊÃ} ÌÞ Ê UÊ iviViÊiV >ÃÊÊÊVÀ>Ã ÊL>ÀÀiÀÃÊ«ÀiÃiÌ
Figure 2.1 Reason’s Swiss Cheese Model as applied to road safety indicating how crashes occur(Wegman and Aarts, 2004)
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Figure 2.2 Reason’s Swiss Cheese Model as applied to road safety indicating how crashes may be prevented(Wegman and Aarts, 2004)
Our basic assumption is that human beings make errors, no matter how well they are educated and motivated. Sometimes people do not always abide by the rules. In order to prevent crashes, we are now almost completely dependent on the extent to which individuals are capable of (and sometimes willing to) correct their own errors. Road users are sometimes distracted (in the car and outside the car), fail to observe other road users or sharp bends and don’t pay enough attention to the driving task. Drivers don’t anticipate and respond well to the static and dynamic elements in road traffic. Even when trying to prevent a crash, they make errors.
The basic idea is to eliminate the holes in the first couple of screens. If we do that, we can reduce the risk for crashes and are hopefully no longer as dependent on the actions of other road users (see figure 2.2). We can even try to reduce the degree of dangerous actions by offering a safe environment. In this environment, safe behaviour must be easy and self-evident, and risky behaviour must be complicated and not attractive. Here we enter the field of designing an environment for a human decision maker, also called the world of decision architecture. In their book Nudge, Thaler andand Sunstein (2008) developed an idea to nudge people towardtow decisions that will improve their lives by making them ‘healthier,‘he wealthier and more free’. Their book discusses topicstop from everyday life; for example, how to make complex decisions,de such as choosing a health insurance scheme, while balancingba the coverage, personal risks and the premium due.d The book’s cover shows a mother elephant with a babyb elephant. The mother is behind the baby. The baby canc do whatever it wants to, but knows that the mother is behind it. If the baby should do anything the mother disapprovesd of, she can take action and nudge the baby in the right direction. Consider the mother elephant as a metaphor for the environment of road users and us
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 31 as the baby elephant. This environment should support road users in taking the right, safe decisions. We have to understand that choices and decisions often prove to be too complex for people: people are not rational, people’s choices are motivated by the daily grind, fear or laziness, or by just following the majority, or simply by not knowing what to choose. Thaler and Sunstein (2008) have given their way of thinking the motto ‘libertarian paternalism’. Applied to road traffic, this idea perfectly matches the concept of shared responsibility. No command and control and no laissez-faire. A third approach.
I have observed that the media in South Australia tend to portray road crashes as acts by road users that are intentional, violating and somewhat criminal. This view is often reinforced by the police, who are often interviewed at the crash scene. It is common for the road safety message to be framed as a problem of extreme behaviour and the solution is stronger enforcement and punishment. The media clearly has a strong influence on the opinions of the community and politicians about road safety and the perceived solutions — all I can say is that the picture often presented is incomplete. As discussed earlier, this picture of road safety is not supported by the South Australian data and does not cover the scenario of ordinary drivers being involved in crashes.
I can recall a road crash from the Netherlands: UÊ Ê£nÊÞi>ÀÊ`Ê`ÀÛiÀ UÊ ÕÃÌÊ«>ÃÃi`Ê ÃÊ`ÀÛ}ÊÌiÃÌ UÊ ->ÌÕÀ`>ÞÊ} Ì UÊ ÀÛ}Ê ÃÊvÀi`ÃÊ iÊvÀÊ>Ê`ÃV UÊ ÊÜ`}Ê`À>>}iÊV >i UÊ Ì½ÃÊÀ>} UÊ ÃÕ`}iÃÊ>ÊLi` UÊ ÀÛ}ÊÌÊv>ÃÌ UÊ /ÀiiÃÊ>}Ã`iÊÌ iÊÀ>` Cause? UÊ ÊÞÕ}]ÊiÝ«iÀiVi`Ê`ÀÛiÀ UÊ ÀÛ}Ê>ÌÊ} Ì UÊ ÊÌ iÊÀ> UÊ 7Ì Ê>««À«À>ÌiÊëii` UÊ ÊÕiÝ«iVÌi`Êà >À«ÊLi` UÊ >`ÊÌÞÀià UÊ /ÀiiÃÊÊÌ iÊLi` Do not look for a single cause or culprit!!
32 FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL ÊÊÊÊ 7Ê6-" Ê",Ê," Ê- /9Ê Ê-"1/Ê1-/, Ê Ê Ê
If we want to eliminate risky traffic conditions and eliminate holes in the first few screens in order to make road safety less dependent on how well the road user ‘performs’ (the holes in the last two screens), we drift away from the traditional ‘blame the driver approach’. In the case of a crash, we don’t ask who is to blame, but instead we ask ‘how could this crash have occurred?’ Sometimes this new approach is called a paradigm shift. This new approach fits better with our understanding of the majority of crashes, in which the ordinary behaviour of ordinary people is involved instead of criminal behaviour by a small number offenders. What we expect from designers and operators is a road traffic system in which conditions are created in such a way that those ordinary road users, who unintentionally commit errors, will not be punished for those errors with serious injury or death. Trying to create safe conditions is a proactive approach aimed at eliminating latent errors in traffic, and this is a key element of what is referred to as a Safe System approach.
We have a few examples of countries with a high level of ambition. The most well-known come from Sweden (Vision Zero), the Netherlands (Sustainable Safety) and, more recently, Western Australia (Towards zero: getting there together). The European Commission has published several ambitious road safety strategies in the last few decades (50 per cent fatality reduction in ten years) and proposes to be close to zero in 2050 in their recent White paper on Transport (2030–2050) (European Commission 2011).
The National Road Safety Strategy 2011–2020 embraces the Safe System approach to road safety improvement (ATC, 2011). This document states:
Australians should not regard death and serious injury as an inevitable cost of road travel. Crashes will continue to occur on our roads because humans will always make mistakes no matter how informed and compliant they are. But we do not have to accept a transport system that allows people to be killed or severely injured as a consequence.
The vision of the National Road Safety Strategy details two directions. First, the strategy announces that the foundations for a genuinely Safe System of road travel must be laid — a legacy that will benefit future generations. This is fully in line with Dutch
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 33 thinking. The Dutch borrowed the word ‘sustainable’ from the United Nations report on sustainable developments (the committee that prepared this report was chaired by Norway’s former prime minister, Gro Harlem Brundtland) emphasising that investments now would result in an inherently safe road transport system and that future generations will not inherit a road traffic system in which, inevitably, the same number of people are killed or injured as today.
The second line of thinking deals with a quantitative target for 2020. The strategy proposes a target of 30 per cent less fatalities and serious road crash injuries in 2020 compared with the average numbers in the baseline (2008–2010). I consider this type of target a good choice as it includes serious injuries rather than just mortality rates (fatalities per 100 000 population). If just using mortality rates, population growth will mean the target can be reached while at the same time more people can be killed on the roads. For example, with a population increase of ten per cent and a mortality rate reduction of five per cent, the number of people killed will increase by five per cent.
In the Netherlands there are different ways of describing a Safe System approach. The Dutch Sustainable Safety Vision (Koornstra et al., 1992; Wegman & Aarts, 2005) has, as its purpose, the prevention of crashes or, when this cannot be achieved, the reduction of crash severity to such an extent that the risk of (serious) injury is almost excluded. A proactive approach is used in the pursuit of these goals. It identifies in advance which traffic situations could cause conflicts or crashes with serious injury. Next, there are two possibilities: either the situation is adapted in such a way that the risk of a crash is practically eliminated, such as safe median barriers on motorways preventingprev head-on collisions or, if this cannot (yet) be done, the riskrisk of serious injury as a consequence of a crash is prevented. ThisThi two-pronged approach should be carried out in a holistic way,wa to include the entire road network, the whole vehicle fleet andan all road user groups in an integrated way.
TheTh OECD report Towards Zero: Ambitious Road Safety Targets anand the Safe System Approach (OECD/ITF, 2008) can be cconsideredo as a major step forward in getting the Safe System aapproach well understood and also accepted.
IIt makes the bold statement that a Safe System approach is tthe only way to achieve the vision of zero fatalities and serious injuries and that the road system can be designed to expect and accommodate human error. The report identifies four main characteristics of a Safe System approach:
1. Road users will remain fallible and crashes will occur.
2. Designers of the road traffic system need to accept and share responsibility for the safety of the system and users of the system need to accept responsibility for complying with the rules and constraints of the system.
3. Safety management decisions should be aligned with broader transport and planning decisions (meeting economic, human and environmental goals).
4. Interventions are shaped interventions to meet the long term goal (zero fatalities and serious injuries).
34 FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL ÊÊÊÊ 7Ê6-" Ê",Ê," Ê- /9Ê Ê-"1/Ê1-/, Ê Ê Ê
/ iÊVVi«ÌÊvÊà >Ài`ÊÀiëÃLÌÞÊÃÊÌÊ>Ü>ÞÃÊÜiÊÕ`iÀÃÌ`°Ê iÌÊiÊ}ÛiÊÞÊ interpretation here. Road crashes were associated with road users in the past. Road users were blamed for having a crash and causing that crash. Designers and operators of road transport systems have their own responsibility and, as a result, we face a wide variety of laws and regulations in all countries. So, shared responsibility has existed for decades. But how do we decide if the managers of the system took appropriate action to reduce risks to a ‘reasonable level’ if, at the end of the day, the road user can be blamed for almost all crashes? To answer this question, we see a fundamental shift from an approach with almost no obligations — within legislation and democratically legitimised decisions — towards designers and operators who are made accountable for their decisions. Here we can witness a fundamental shift away from an almost sole responsibility of the road user to a shared responsibility between road user and designers and operators of the system.
This leads to the necessity for a definition of the responsibilities of both parties. It is interesting to see a first attempt at such an approach which was developed by motorist clubs around the world, a network that the RAA belongs to. This approach was developed as the Road Assessment Program (RAP), with the intention of rating the safety quality of roads as a basis for developing countermeasures: assume that a road user complies with all legislation (belted, no speeding, not above a legal alcohol limit) and is driving in a five- star car on a five-star road, then the chance of a serious injury or a fatality should be zero. This is the first part of this shared responsibility concept.
The next areas are the responsibilities of designers and operators. We can identify more traditional stakeholders: car manufacturers, road authorities and legislators. In road safety «>Ã]ÊÌ iÀÊÌ>ÃÃÊ>ÀiÊ`iwi`ÆÊ ÜiÛiÀ]ÊÌÊÃÊÃi`ÊÊ>ÊÌi}À>Ìi`ÊÜ>Þ°Ê iÌÊiÊ}ÛiÊ>Ê example to illustrate this point. Cars are tested in Australian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP) tests with an impact of 70 km/h in a head-on offset test and cars are designed in such a way that no serious consequences for drivers can occur. But this does not relate to the real world, where impact speeds far higher than 70 km/h exist on rural roads, for example. Here we see speed limits and driving speeds of up to and over 110 km/h and we know that modern cars will not offer much protection at such speeds should an impact occur. This is not an integrated decision! Car manufacturers and road authorities are from different worlds and these differences are not in the interests of car drivers. We also have less traditional stakeholders who can contribute to road safety, and the time has come to identify them as stakeholders and to make them accountable as well. These groups include those who are in charge of planning, the private sector with activities on the roads, and the health sector. Adopting this concept of shared responsibility has some relevant implications for road safety:
Ê UÊÊÊÊÊÃÕ`ÊL>>ViÊ >ÃÊÌÊLiÊ`iÌwi`ÊLiÌÜiiÊ`Û`Õ>ÊÀ>`ÊÕÃiÀÃÊ>`Ê«ÕLVÊ>`Ê private stakeholders.
Ê UÊÊÊ/ iÊÀiëÃLÌiÃÊvÊÌÀ>`Ì>ÊÃÌ>i `iÀÃ]ÊÃÕV Ê>ÃÊÀ>`Ê>ÕÌ ÀÌiÃ]ÊivÀViiÌÊ authorities and vehicle designers, have to be defined more sharply and they have to be made more accountable for their decisions.
Ê UÊÊÊ ÀiÊÃÌ>i `iÀÃÊÃ Õ`ÊLiÊÛÌi`ÊÌÊ>iÊ>ÊVÌÀLÕÌÊÌÊ«ÀÛ}ÊÀ>`Ê safety.
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 35 Based on different sources from the best-performing countries in the world (Sweden and the Netherlands), from a remarkable OECD report, and from the Australian National Road Safety Strategy 2011–2020, I conclude that adapting the Safe System approach is the best way forward for South Australia. However, we cannot offer a cookbook simply containing all the ingredients and procedures to implement such a system in South Australia. Over the next decade, the South Australian Road Safety Strategy and its action plans have to develop and adapt this vision to local conditions — my report intends to provide some support and guidance for that journey.
I hope that South Australia will seriously embark on the journey towards a Safe System. If appropriate interventions are made, a considerable reduction in fatalities and injuries can be expected. However, this new approach will also be demanding, because there will not be any quick wins or low-hanging fruit. South Australia has already passed that stage in road safety. This journey will also be different from the journey undertaken in the past which brought great successes and wins.
36 FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL ÊÊÊÊ 7Ê6-" Ê",Ê," Ê- /9Ê Ê-"1/Ê1-/, Ê Ê Ê
To summarise this more complicated future, I would like to make a few observations:
Ê UÊÊÊÊ->viÊ-ÞÃÌiÊ>««À>V ÊÃÊ>Ê«À>VÌÛiÊ>««À>V Ê>`ÊÃÊL>Ãi`ÊÊÕÀÊ}iiÀ>Ê understanding of risks in road traffic. As a result, we shall consider making interventions although we cannot defend them with specific data. I always give the example of the street where I live: it is not necessary to wait for a crash to occur to decide that a traffic calmed street is safer than a street with a speed limit of 50 or 60 km/h. We know that already, so there is no need to prove that in my street. An example of ‘it is too late to lock the stable door after the horse has bolted’.
Ê UÊÊÊ7iÊ >ÛiÊÌÊiÃV>«iÊvÀÊÌ iÊÌÀ>`Ì>ÊÀ>`ÊÃ>viÌÞÊ«>Þ}ÀÕ`ÊvÊÌ iÊÌ ÀiiÊ ½Ã\Ê engineering, education and enforcement, with their only goal to improve road safety. If we can make progress, we certainly shouldn’t miss opportunities. However, we should explore a wider range of opportunities and also enter arenas in which road safety is not yet present. Planning is one of those arenas; public health is another and environmental policies a third. From a road safety perspective, we should try to liaise between these different areas. I expect that road safety policymakers and professionals will have to start building a bridge and try to explain how to create win-win solutions. These types of solutions should be developed together with experts from those other arenas. This will result in more integrated decisions, where reaching more goals should be considered. And it is good to understand that goals other than road safety should be met as well!
Ê UÊÊÊÃÊ>ÊVÃiµÕiViÊvÊÌ ÃÊÜ`iÀÊ«iÀëiVÌÛi]ÊÜiÊ >ÛiÊÌÊVÕ`iÊÀiÊÃÌ>i `iÀÃÊÌÊ improve road safety, from all levels of government, from peer/lobby/interest groups, from the private sector, and last, but not least, this will be a very complicated task without support from the community and road users. Real leadership is needed for this challenging task and it is my opinion that leaders such as the Premier, the Minister for Road Safety, the Cabinet and CEOs are all needed to achieve a successful result.
These three points illustrate the need to prepare for this Safe System approach before policy actually implements measures derived from, and fitting into, this approach. Moreover, we have to understand that we have great opportunities to win when we operate together with other important developments, such as traffic management and environmental policies. The next parts of this report discuss activities that are intended to deliver a sound and solid basis for the journey.
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 37 A Safe System approach does not wait for crashes before acting, but tries to be proactive. Being proactive means having a good understanding of why crashes occur and including this in decision making.
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3. Create conditions for implementing a Safe System approach
As indicated in Chapter 2, I believe that South Australia should prepare itself for the introduction of a Safe System approach. Not only because the National Road Safety Strategy 2011–2020 has adopted this vision, but also because it basically starts from the idea that fatalities and serious injuries should not be considered as a necessary price to pay for (motorised) traffic. Chapter 2 explains that a Safe System approach is a logical next step for an area in which all simple measures have been taken and it is not so easy to simply improve the performance of existing policies and programs in a better and more cost effective way. It is popular to say ‘start policies by picking low-hanging fruit’. South Australia’s past successes in driving down its road toll have made good use of this: without doubt, traditional interventions have resulted in fewer casualties than in the past. Also without doubt, these traditional interventions have not yet achieved their maximum benefit, and higher quality implementation has the potential to further improve road safety. However, many of these traditional measures are approaching the end of their life cycle. The Safe System approach can create new momentum for road safety and can bring in new players and stakeholders besides the more traditional ones. The Safe System approach does not wait for crashes and casualties before acting, as the more traditional approaches do. The Safe System approach aims to build in safety before crashes occur. Road safety should be an inherent part of all decision making that affects road traffic, and possibly road safety. I include here the design of the system and the operations and uses of that system. This is a pro-active approach, in which we have to include stakeholders such as planners and designers who are active in shaping our public space.
The next component of this view is that we should not compromise road safety easily. Speed management is a good example to explain this. We have to manage speed in such a way that, when crashes occur, impact speeds do not exceed certain thresholds. Driving speeds at intersections should not exceed 50 km/h because, if we have higher impact speeds in side collisions drivers and passengers can be seriously injured, if not killed. So, a Safe System should be designed and used in such a way that 50 km/h is the maximum driving speed at an intersection. A Safe System approach requires this to be applied, not incidentally, or only at intersections with a (relatively) high number of crashes, but at all intersections in South Australia. Thus, all intersections should become lower than 50 km/h, or the active safety quality of motor vehicles should prevent side collisions, or the passive safety quality of vehicles should be improved. These three options cannot be implemented overnight,
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 39 of course. But, from a Safe System perspective, we have to decide which option to follow and try to reach 100 per cent, step by step.
I paid a visit to Mount Gambier. A local police officer drove me around. He proved to have a fantastic memory, remembering all the crashes that had occurred over the years in the region. I brought a DPTI map with me showing the locations of these crashes. He brought me to an intersection and informed me about a fatal crash. It was a side impact crash and both drivers simply drove too fast. If you see photos of that intersection, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of such intersections in South Australia, and these crashes can occur everywhere. This specific intersection had no crash history and will face perhaps no fatal crashes in the (near) future. But a serious crash can occur. Although the chances of a fatal crash per intersection are low, they are not zero as long as cars can drive through them faster than 50 km/h.
Driving speeds at intersections are just one example of road safety, but perhaps a striking one. A few more can be mentioned of course, but the overarching idea is to start from the human being (I call this ‘putting people at the centre of a Safe System’) and to create forgiving environments.
When we talk about including road safety in planning and designing our public spaces, if we believe non-traditional areas could help us in making our dream a reality, if we think that other policy areas should include road safety consequences in their decision making, we have to set a new course. This is a challenging new task. Two areas seem to be especially attractive to explore: investments in improving public space and road infrastructure and, second, traffic management. Of course, road safety should connect itself to the ambitions of the 30 Year Plan for Greater Adelaide. As this is beyond the scope of the traditional road safety portfolio I recommend when developing this new task not just to include the Minister for Road Safety but more ministers under the leadership of the Premier. This Safe System approach is a collective task; it is a new approach and we cannot simply ask the Minister for Road Safety to be responsible for introducing Safe Systems.
A Safe System approach does not wait for crashes before acting, but tries to be proactive. Being proactive means having a good understanding of why crashes occur and including this in decision making in urban and regional planning. I recommend that a Safe System approach be included with the actions arising out of the 30 Year Plan for Greater Adelaide. If we are able to get road safety integrated into these fields, this would really help in implementing interventions and measures aligned with this Safe System approach.
The following are what I regard as important steps towards creating conditions for the successful implementation of a Safe System approach to road safety in South Australia.
1.1 Establish a taskforce under the leadership of the Premier supported by the Minister for Road Safety to implement a Safe System approach
A Safe Systems Taskforce must be established to identify ways in which Safe Systems principles can be implemented across government and industry. The Taskforce must consist of recognised experts in the field and respected individuals
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with strong links to the top levels of government. As strong leadership is required across many agencies and sectors, the Premier must oversee the activities and outcomes of the Taskforce. It is anticipated that the Taskforce would have a life of one year and tackle the following critical tasks as a minimum:
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1.2 Integrate safety into urban and regional planning
1.2.1 Safety in mobility goals in urban planning
Create a document that accompanies the 30 Year Plan for Greater Adelaide advising how to include road safety in urban planning and the benefits of doing so.
1.2.2 Road safety connections in the 30 Year Plan for Greater Adelaide
Establish a project that identifies, in a detailed way, road safety connections with the Adelaide 30 Year Plan. This should incorporate the perspectives of road safety researchers, road engineers and planners.
1.2.3 Update planning procedures
Re-assess the ‘minimal’ level of road safety to be expected at various levels of planning. Develop tools that facilitate the creation of Road Safety Impact Assessments across all levels of planning including: Ê Ê Ê UÊÊ/À>ëÀÌÊ*>} Ê Ê Ê UÊÊ ÀÀ`ÀÊ*>} Ê Ê Ê UÊÊÊ*ÀiVVÌÊ*>}°
1.3 More efficient, greener and safer traffic management
Conduct a review that investigates how road safety can be better incorporated into current traffic management practices across Adelaide and South Australia including:
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FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 41 Comparing the performance of South Australia with other states and countries, studying our own history and trying to understand why we have made progress, is very important.
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4. Understanding the problems and measuring progress
Road safety problems can be expressed using different indicators: first and foremost, by the number of people killed and injured in road crashes. We rely heavily on data collected by the police. Good quality police data is crucial, not only for the legal duties of the police themselves, but also for safety policies and safety research. In general, we know that the less severe the crash, the lower the quality of the data in the police report. We also know that there are some crashes that are not reported to the police at all: under-reporting. As a result, we don’t have a complete picture of all road crashes if we only use the police data. Apart from under-reporting, police data can also be skewed. In my own country, the Netherlands, it is a known fact that crashes with non- motorised road users, especially cyclists, are more under-reported than those with motorised vehicles. This results in a biased picture of road crashes and, by not knowing this, policy priorities can be biased as well. It is my impression that fatalities are well-recorded in South Australia; I cannot have a firm opinion about the quality of injuries simply because this is not well documented and studied. I recommend that this continue to be analysed, especially with a view to detecting changes over time in under-reporting.
Assuming that the number of fatalities follows a downward trend, it is possible that this trend could be the result of a lower number of fatal crashes, but it is also possible that it is the result of deteriorating crash recording. The first reason is welcomed of course, especially if it reflects good safety policies. The second reason should not be welcomed at all. The problem of under-reporting is also relevant if we want to compare different states or countries. In that case, we have to understand under- reporting in different jurisdictions before reaching any conclusions. In general terms, we can state that data quality and data completeness of road crashes is of extreme importance for road safety policies and research.
For people killed in road crashes, an international definition is available (died within 30 days after a road crash). For injured people, we face the problem of a lack of international harmonisation, with several definitions around. At the very least, it is important to define the severity of injuries. A well-known and often used criterion is being admitted to hospital (staying for at least one night). In general terms, the severity can be classified using several international systems. This classification should be done by doctors and not by police officers. There is growing international interest in data on injuries. One reason
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 43 is that crashes resulting in injuries are not identical to fatal crashes. They tell a different story and we cannot just study fatal crashes to formulate policies to reduce injury crashes. However, we have another good reason to include injury crashes in our policies and ÀiÃi>ÀV °Ê+ÕÌiÊ>Ê«À«ÀÌÊvÊÌ iÊVÃÌÃÊvÊÀ>`ÊVÀ>Ã iÃÊ>ÀiÊÕÀÞÊÀi>Ìi`°Ê/ iÊv>VÌÊÌ >Ì]Ê in international comparisons, hardly any attention is paid to injuries can be explained by the quality problems we face with data on injury crashes. The International Traffic Safety and Data Group addresses this problem in its report: Reporting on serious road traffic casualties (OECD/ITF, 2011b). This report proposes the combination, and use, of different data sources for a sound understanding of non-fatal road traffic crashes. A key message coming from this report is that police data should remain the main source for road crash statistics, but that this data should be complemented (enriched) by hospital data and, if available, by data from hospital emergency departments. Procedures are given in the OECD/ITF report on how to combine both data sources and I welcome further actions in South Australia on this specific item.
For a meaningful comparison of road safety between states in Australia and other countries, the numbers of fatalities and injuries are typically ‘normalised’ and expressed as a fatality rate or casualty rate. We do this in order to correct for differences in size and related mobility. The size of a country or State can be expressed in terms of population, number of (motor) vehicles, length of the road network or distances travelled. For example, we can relate the number of casualties to the number of inhabitants (mortality rates or morbidity rates), or to the number of kilometres travelled (fatality risks or injury risks). The first are public health ratios and allow us to compare different ‘burden of diseases’. The World Health Organisation publishes health statistics regularly, and, from the 2008 statistics, it became clear that road crashes ranked ninth as the leading cause of death in 2004. It is expected that, by 2030, road crashes will rank fifth, above well-known health problems such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria (World Health Organisation, 2008). It is important to have these figures in order to give the right priorities to prevention and medical treatments.
If we relate the number of casualties (fatalities and severe injuries) to the number of kilometres travelled, we gain insight into how many risks people run in traffic. The lower the risk, the higher the safety quality of the road transport system. We can use these risks to compare the safety of different transport systems, such as aviation, rail transport, shipping and road transport. It is not surprising to find that risks per kilometre driven on roads are far higher than in trains or planes. In road transport, we know for example that, per kilometre driven, users of motorised vehicles run a lower risk than non-motorised traffic. Motorcyclists run a relatively high risk, as do young and novice drivers. The elderly also run a higher risk. The reasons for the differences in risk are completely different. The reasons for those differences can be important starting points for developing road safety policies. For example, the relatively high risks associated with young and novice drivers are behaviour related (age, inexperience, high risk conditions), while the risks associated with the elderly are better explained by physical frailty in a crash (the elderly are not risky, but ‘at risk’).
Both indicators (related to population, or related to kilometres travelled) are relevant, and both are frequently used in road safety. However, one cannot replace the other and each should be used to answer different questions.
44 FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL ÊÊÊ1 ,-/ Ê/ Ê*," -Ê Ê -1, Ê*,", -- Ê Ê Ê
Comparing the safety performance of different states or countries is interesting because of what we can learn. It is instructing to find the answer about why the mortality rate in Victoria is lower than in South Australia. Studying the history of safety developments in South Australia can provide better insight into the underlying forces and, hopefully, the effectiveness, of road safety interventions and potential improvements in the future. Comparing the safety performance of South Australia with other states and countries, studying our own history and trying to understand why we have made progress, is very important in my opinion. This also sheds light on how we can make further progress and I recommend intensified efforts in this endeavour.
At SWOV, we have had positive experiences with the SUNflower approach. We applied this approach over the last decade or so in Europe, starting with a comparison of safety between the SUN-countries: Sweden, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, the three LiÃÌÊ«iÀvÀ}ÊVÕÌÀiÃÊÊÌ iÊÜÀ`Ê ÀÃÌÀ>ÊiÌÊ>°]ÊÓääÓ®°Ê >ÌiÀ]ÊÌ ÃÊÜ>ÃÊiÝ«>`i`Ê to nine European countries (Wegman et al., 2005). The SUNflower model is based on a Ì>À}iÌÊ iÀ>ÀV ÞÊ`iÊ`iÛi«i`ÊÊ iÜÊ>`Ê /-]ÊÓäää®° The model is built on a triangular hierarchy of layers, narrowing as it rises into the outcome levels. At the top of this triangle is the social cost of road crashes: specifically the socio-economic consequences of fatalities, injuries, and so on. The second level includes all consequences that are considered undesirable and to be prevented. We reached agreement about which cost types to include in this level: medical costs, production loss, quality of life costs, material costs and settlement costs. The third level, safety performance indicators, captures all the safety qualities of the system components of road traffic — the safety quality of roads, vehicles, human behaviour and the medical system. The idea is to be comprehensive and to include all important aspects of safety relating to roads and crashes. The fourth level includes the safety measures and programs which are funded in the fifth, or base level, of the model — structure and culture. This base includes essential background information for all the observations and indicators at higher levels of the model. ‘Structure’ refers to the physical and operational (functional) structure of road safety management. ‘Culture’ consists of values and norms in their social sense. In Chapter 6, I explain this safety culture in more detail; here it is enough to state that this safety culture should be measured regularly because it is not stable in time. In contrast, structural elements generally carry a longer lifetime.
The layers are connected — this connection is very important and must be seen as conceptually causal for the top four layers. Simply put: a better road safety strategy, better implemented, should result in better safety performance indicators and, in turn, less people killed and injured with a lower cost to society.
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 45 Figure 4.1 A target hierarchy for road safety (Koornstra et al., 2002; based on LTSA, 2000)
As we said, we have used this concept several times now and we have learned how to work with it. Based on these experiences, we have learned a few lessons:
Ê UÊ ÜiÊii`ÊÛ>`>Ìi`ÊÜi`}iÊ°i°Ê>ÊVi>À} ÕÃi®Ê>`Ê}`ʵÕ>ÌÞÊ`>Ì>
ÊUÊÊÜiÊii`Ê`>Ì>ÊvÀÊ>ÊiÛiÃÊvÊÌ iÊ«ÞÀ>`Ê>`ÊÜiÊV>ÌÊÀiÞÊÊv>Ì>ÊVÀ>Ã Ê data only
Ê UÊ v>Ì>ÌiÃÊ>`ÊÕÀiÃÊÌiÊ>Ê`vviÀiÌÊÃÌÀÞÊ>`Ê`>Ì>ÊÊLÌ Ê>ÀiÊii`i`
ÊUÊÊÜiÊ >ÛiÊÌÊi>ÀÊvÀÊÕÀÊÜÊ ÃÌÀÞ\ÊÌÀ}Ê>`ÊiÛ>Õ>ÌÊÀiÃi>ÀV ÊÊ key interventions
Ê UÊ ÜiÊ >ÛiÊÌÊi>ÀÊvÀÊÌ iÀÃ\ÊÌ iÀÊVÕÌÀiÃÊ>`ÊÕÀÃ`VÌð We hope to learn more by using this SUNflower model. This requires good data, collected and monitored regularly. Supporting research is needed to better understand the causal relationship between the different levels in the model. For South Australia, I recommend that this research and monitoring should be undertaken independently from stakeholders and implemented policies and plans. I think that an annual, independent progress report can make a major contribution towards a better level of safety in South Australia.
46 FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL ÊÊÊ1 ,-/ Ê/ Ê*," -Ê Ê -1, Ê*,", -- Ê Ê Ê
My recommendations address three different issues about understanding the problem and measuring progress:
ÊUÊÊÌ iʵÕ>ÌÞÊ>`ÊÕÃiÊvÊÀ>`ÊÃ>viÌÞÊ`>Ì>ÊÌÊÃÕ««ÀÌÊ«VÞ>}Ê>`ÊÀiÃi>ÀV ÊÊ South Australia (2.1)
ÊUÊÊÌ iÊÀi>Ìà «ÊLiÌÜiiÊ i>Ì Ê>`ÊÀ>`ÊÃ>viÌÞÊÓ°Ó®ÊpÊÊ`iÌwi`ÊÃiÊVÊ ground between the two and, moreover, the health sector itself indicated an ambition to cooperate with other sectors, such as road safety, by using the slogan ‘Health in all Policies’. The intention is not only to reduce the burden of disease (health costs) but also, in some domains, actions can be taken to serve health goals and road safety goals, for example, emergency services, alcohol policies, fitness to drive, active transport for improving health
ÊUÊÊÌ iÊÀ>`ÊÃ>viÌÞÊ«ÀLiÃÊiÝ«iÀiVi`ÊLÞÊ`}iÕÃÊVÕÌiÃÊӰή°ÊÌÊÃÊÞÊ understanding that the nature of the road safety problem for this part of South Australia’s population (25 000 in a total population of 1.6 million) is completely different and deserves special attention. It is a real challenge to make this a successful enterprise. The health sector has strong relationships with indigenous communities and a public health perspective might be the right way to achieve positive outcomes (see also a report from another Thinker in Residence, Kickbusch, 2010). The role of proper driver education and licensing could also be a key to reducing safety problems in indigenous communities.
2.1 Road safety data
Without good data we are lost.
2.1.1 Fatalities and injuries
Use injury statistics of all severities rather than a focus mainly on fatalities in the setting of targets. Conduct research to check the quality of injury data and the implications of using this as a performance measure. Understand and monitor the under-reporting of crashes.
2.1.2 Crash data
Focus on the collection of data on system failures as opposed to extreme behaviour. Seek opportunities to constantly improve the quality and integrity of crash data and link hospital data with the Traffic Accident Reporting System TARS and insurance claims databases. Crash data should be made available to the public — one avenue might be to use CASR’s WebTARS for example.
2.1.3 Data on exposure
Collect more data on exposure measures, in particular, distance travelled for various road user groups, age groups, geographical distributions and road types, so that risks (fatalities/injuries per kilometre driven) can be better established.
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 47 2.1.4 Road safety performance Indicators
Develop new measures related to system failures and use safety performance indicators other than (enforced) behaviours, including:
Ê Ê Ê UÊÊÊÕÀiÃÊ>`ÊÕÀÞÊVÀ>Ã iÃ
Ê Ê Ê UÊÊÊÌÀ>Ûi}Êëii`Ã
Ê Ê Ê UÊÊÌÀ>vwVÊÛÕiÃÊ>`ÊiÌÀiÃÊÌÀ>Ûii`
Ê Ê Ê UÊÊVÀ>à ÊVÃÌð 2.1.5 Road safety costs
Adopt and develop the ‘Willingness to Pay’ method for calculating crash costs and conduct a study into who is carrying the burden of road safety crash costs to make the case for additional stakeholders to contribute towards road safety.
2.1.6 Comparison/benchmarking with Victoria/NSW (SUNflower model)
Conduct a study based on the European SUNflower approach, comparing Australian States (e.g. SA, NSW and Victoria) to see what can be learnt from the differences that exist. This study should involve collaboration between different research institutes and policymakers (i.e. road authorities).
2.1.7 Surveys (SARTRE)/social marketing
Conduct regular marketing surveys that are designed to specifically measure awareness, attitudes towards problems and acceptance of measures in relation to road safety to assist in policy development.
2.1.8 Annual independent progress report
Create an independent annual progress report providing an appraisal of progress using all levels in the SUNflower model and the targets set for South Australia.
2.1.9 Make road safety data available
In general terms, I suggest that road safety data be made available to everyone (through the internet for example), paying appropriate attention to privacy issues.
48 FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL ÊÊÊ1 ,-/ Ê/ Ê*," -Ê Ê -1, Ê*,", -- Ê Ê Ê
2.2 Health
Road safety and health should be good neighbours.
2.2.1. Road safety in health policies and health in road safety policies
Create a project that identifies synergies between public health and road safety and where cooperation can occur with input from the road safety and health sectors. Hold an initial meeting between DPTI and SA Health (Health in All Policies) as the first step and start by exploring potential win-win situations.
2.3 Indigenous people
2.3.1 Analysis/in-depth
Conduct research to further understand the circumstances and context of remote area crashes involving indigenous people.
2.3.2 Remote area demonstration project
Establish a demonstration project with SA Health to show ways in which road safety issues can be addressed in indigenous communities.
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 49 It is important to view individual measures or interventions not in splendid isolation, but as part of the bigger picture.
50 FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL ACTIONS AND MEASURES
5. Actions and measures
I don’t see it as my task to deliver a Road Safety Action Plan. However, it might be helpful to provide a few ideas about potential actions and measures to be included in future action plans. A final decision could then be made after checking how well interventions are addressing South Australia’s road safety problems, what the literature tells us about effectiveness and efficiency and reasons behind progress to date. Of course we should answer questions such as, who should we make responsible for implementation, and how can we fund the actions and measures?
Final decisions should be made when a specific intervention has been detailed, assessments of (safety) impacts and costs are able to be made, and some modelling work has been done. This will establish the building blocks for creating and monitoring performance of the South Australian Road Safety Strategy. These building blocks will illustrate how a road safety target of 50 per cent reduction of traffic casualties in ten years’ time can be reached. Only then can the ambitiousness of a 50 per cent reduction be seen.
The rest of this chapter consists of a list that shows the depth and breadth of road safety issues that could be considered in the long term, consistent with my vision of how to improve road safety in South Australia. The list is not intended to be a detailed and prescriptive actions and measures list, but rather a list that is referenced over time when considering future action plans and road safety initiatives. Note that these recommendations do not imply that nothing has been done or is being done in these areas; they are designed as a comprehensive list of things requiring consideration to improve road safety in South Australia. When detailing these issues in action plans I recommend that they be checked as to how they fit into a Safe System approach. For example, it is important to view individual measures or interventions not in splendid isolation, but as part of the bigger picture: in other words, as a way of accomplishing a Safe System approach. When designing action plans, individual measures should be mutually attuned to each other.
3.1 School education A situation should be reached where only evidence-based education will be carried out.
3.1.1 Alignment project
Implement a project that reviews current road safety education programs in schools and recommends what is needed to align these with current best practice principles. FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 51 3.1.2 Create a road safety resource centre
Create a resource centre to make it easier for schools to adopt best practice road safety programs. Specific objectives of the centre would be to:
Ê Ê Ê UÊÊÊ>ÊÌÜ>À`ÃÊ>`«ÌÊvÊÀ>`ÊÃ>viÌÞÊ«À}À>ÃÊLÞÊ>ÊÃV ÃÊÊ-ÕÌ Ê Australia
Ê Ê Ê UÊÊÊ`iÛi«Ê>ÌiÀ>ÃÊ>`ÊÀiÃÕÀViÃÊÌ >ÌÊÜÕ`ÊÃÕ««ÀÌÊÃÕV Ê«À}À>ÃÊÕÃ}Ê results from the alignment project.
Instil a culture of evidence-based program development.
3.2 Mass media
3.2.1 Integration
Continue efforts to better coordinate road safety campaigns more strongly with other road safety activities such as enforcement.
3.2.2 Scientific evaluation
Continue with evaluations on the effectiveness of road safety campaigns based on behavioural outcome measures and feedback the evaluation results to the design of new campaigns.
3.2.3 Involvement of local communities
Involve local communities in road safety campaigns to enhance their effectiveness.
3.3 Enforcement
Increased enforcement effectiveness will further improve road safety.
3.3.1 New enforcement strategy (three priorities)
Develop a strategy that articulates the enforcement balance to create:
Ê Ê Ê UÊÊÊ}iiÀ>Ê`iÌiÀÀiVi
Ê Ê Ê UÊÊëiVwVÊ`iÌiÀÀiVi
Ê Ê Ê UÊÊÜ>ÞÃÊvÊ`i>}ÊÜÌ ÊiÝÌÀiiÊLi >ÛÕÀð 3.3.2 Operations/intelligence/technology
Utilise new technologies and intelligence in operations to maximise the effectiveness of existing resources. This should be linked with the development of the enforcement strategy (see 3.3.1).
3.3.3 Integration with campaigns
Better supplement enforcement activities with mass media efforts.
52 FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL ACTIONS AND MEASURES
3.3.4 Scientific evaluation
Conduct research into traffic enforcement in South Australia with a view to:
Ê Ê Ê UÊÊ`iÛi«}ÊÌÃÊÌÊ}Õ`iÊ«iÀ>ÌÃ
Ê Ê Ê UÊÊÊ`iÛi«}Ê>ÊÜi`}iÊL>ÃiÊÊÌ iÊivviVÌÛiiÃÃÊvÊ`vviÀiÌÊ>««À>V iÃÊ to traffic enforcement.
3.4 Safe roads
We need a system that places less reliance on human judgement and is more forgiving when mistakes occur.
3.4.1 Revisit guidelines
Perform a review of current guidelines and standards to identify any inhibitors to adopting Safe System principles in traffic management and design. Once these inhibitors have been identified, conduct and evaluate demonstration projects to promote alternative approaches to road design and management.
3.4.2 Integrate safety in planning and design
Ensure that road safety is considered at the planning and design stage of projects in the same way as environmental impacts are considered. Establish a reference for the minimal level of safety by functional road type. Develop procedures so that Safety Impact Assessment reports can be produced.
3.4.3 Nudging behaviour
Assess the effectiveness of geometric road design elements that encourage motorists to adopt safer behaviour. Implement small-scale treatments and alterations to demonstrate the concept of ‘nudging’ road users towards safer behaviours. These should be subject to evaluation to eventually build up a knowledge base on effective treatments and designs.
3.4.4 Retrofitting
Develop a plan to retrofit existing roads and corridors to adopt Safe System principles and look for opportunities to execute the plan whenever possible. Follow on from the work of the Safe Systems Task Force and the establishment of a road functional hierarchy and classification for South Australian roads.
3.4.5 Rating of roads
Implement a project to align the ‘minimum safe standards’ of roads according to the functional road hierarchy (agreed to by the Safe Systems Task Force) and outcomes from the Australian Road Assessment Program (AusRAP).
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 53 3.4.6 Stobie poles
Develop a case for eliminating Stobie poles from the road network. This will require efforts to induce cultural change amongst responsible agencies and the establishment of a plan of action and funding. Safe alternatives to the use of Stobie Poles should be investigated.
3.5 Vehicles
Only safe cars are good enough.
3.5.1 Safer fleet
Coordinate efforts to place pressure on the Australian Government to act to prevent the removal of safety systems from vehicles prior to sale on the Australian market.
3.5.2 Fleet owners
Develop a business case for fleet owners to purchase the safest cars possible for their staff. Identify and implement initiatives to ensure that the safest cars are purchased for both government and private fleets.
3.5.3 Safer cars for novice drivers
Develop a scheme so that novice drivers drive the safest vehicle available in the family. Conduct research to determine which of the following mechanisms will be most effective in supporting such a scheme: Ê Ê Ê UÊÊViÌÛiÃ Ê Ê Ê UÊÊÃÕLÃ`iÃ Ê Ê Ê UÊÊi`ÕV>ÌÊV>«>}ÃÊvÀÊ«>ÀiÌðÊ
54 FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL ACTIONS AND MEASURES
3.5.4 Restraint systems
Policies should be developed to reach a 100 per cent wearing rate of seat belts and use of child restraints. Traditional components such as mass media campaigns and police enforcement could not deliver this ambitious aim on their own. Vehicle related interventions (audible seat-belt reminders or even seat-belt interlocks) should be given serious consideration.
3.6 Road safety technology
Enable South Australia to become a breeding ground for road safety technologies.
3.6.1 Road Safety Technology Forum
Create a Road Safety Technology Forum to nurture cooperation between key stakeholders including the government, private and research sectors, to implement road safety technologies in South Australia. This is to be chaired by a respected and knowledgeable individual who can forge cooperation and the development of business models amongst the stakeholders in South Australia. Participation could include the defence industry, technology providers and car manufacturers.
3.6.2 Scoping
The first task of members of the forum will be to scope available technologies and make an inventory and assessment of which technologies are good for South Australia to focus on implementing.
3.6.3 Demonstration projects
Create demonstration projects based on the outcomes of the scoping study (3.6.2). Suggested technologies include:
Ê Ê Ê UÊÊi >Ê>ÕÌ>ÌVÊVÀ>Ã ÊÌwV>Ì®
Ê Ê Ê UÊÊ`}Ì>Êëii`Ê>«Ã
Ê Ê Ê UÊÊÛi ViÊÌiÀVÃ
Ê Ê Ê UÊÊ>vÌiÀ>ÀiÌÊ`iÛViÃ
Ê Ê Ê UÊÊv>Ì}ÕiÊ`iÌiVÌÊ`iÛVið
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 55 3.7 Speed management
Speed kills but speed management saves lives.
3.7.1 Safe speeds and credible speed limits
Establish a framework for the retrofitting of the road network to support the concept of safe and credible speed limits, following on from work by the Safe Systems Task Force.
Knowledge transfer and capacity building activities around credible speed limits is also required.
3.7.2 Setting of speed limits
Conduct a review of current procedures for speed limit setting in South Australia. Aim for a more transparent process that makes the most of opportunities to improve road safety and also offers more support to local government initiatives.
3.7.3 Demonstration projects — metropolitan arterial roads
Conduct demonstration projects focusing on the concept of retrofitting safe and credible speed limits on a major metropolitan arterial road, consistent with the principles of the functional road hierarchy established by the Safe Systems Task Force. The demonstration should be accompanied by a scientific evaluation.
3.7.4 Demonstration project — metropolitan local area
Conduct an evaluated demonstration project focused on retrofitting safe and credible speed limits in a metropolitan local area, consistent with the principles of the functional road hierarchy established by the Safe Systems />ÃÊÀVi°Ê/ iÊ«ÀiVÌÊà Õ`Ê>ÃÊLiÊVÃÃÌiÌÊÜÌ Ê>Ê V>ÊÛiÀiÌÊ Road Safety Plan for the area. The demonstration should be accompanied by a scientific evaluation.
3.7.5 Demonstration project — rural corridor
Conduct an evaluated demonstration project focused on retrofitting safe and credible speed limits on a rural arterial road, consistent with the principles of the functional road hierarchy established by the Safe Systems Task Force. A scientific evaluation should also be conducted on the project.
3.7.6 Demonstration project — rural local area
Conduct an evaluated demonstration project focused on retrofitting safe and credible speed limits in a rural local area, consistent with the principles of the functional road hierarchy established by the Safe Systems Task Force. / iÊ«ÀiVÌÊà Õ`Ê>ÃÊLiÊVÃÃÌiÌÊÜÌ Ê>Ê V>ÊÛiÀiÌÊ,>`Ê->viÌÞÊ Plan for the area and a scientific evaluation should also be conducted.
56 FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL ACTIONS AND MEASURES
3.8 Novice Drivers
Our young and novice drivers deserve better.
3.8.1 Review of current licensing system
Review the current approach to driver (and rider) training and licensing to see if benefits can be gained by improving the quality of training and testing procedures.
3.8.2 Graduated Licensing Scheme
ÊÊ Ê,iÛiÜÊÌ iÊVÕÀÀiÌÊÀ>`Õ>Ìi`Ê ViÃ}Ê-V iiÊvÀÊÛViÊ`ÀÛiÀ Ê ÃÊÊ-ÕÌ Ê Australia with a view to upgrading it to world best practice based on international evidence. Include consideration for peer passenger restrictions and time-based curfews for all novice drivers.
3.8.3 Increase age for license
Initiate a community discussion on the benefits to be obtained from raising the minimum licensing age.
3.9 Older drivers
Older drivers are not risky, but at risk. Review the requirement to annually test motor vehicle license holders from the age of 70 years. Consideration should be given to programs that discuss awareness of, and compensation for, declining ability as drivers age, including alternatives to driving.
3.10 Unlicensed drivers
Conduct research to better understand the problem of unlicensed driving and identify factors behind individual circumstances, motivation and choices.
3.11 Cyclists
Promote cycling by providing safe cycling infrastructure.
3.11.1 Safe cycle strategy/second generation measures
Create a second-generation cycle network that links isolated cycling infrastructure that has been installed over the past decade. This network should be consistent with the philosophies of a functional hierarchy of roads and either:
Ê Ê Ê UÊÊÀiÛiÊVÞVÃÌÃÊvÀÊLÕÃÞÊ>ÀÌiÀ>ÊÀ>`ÃÊÌʵÕiÌiÀÊV>ÊÀ>`ÃÆÊÀ
Ê Ê Ê UÊÊ«ÀÛ`iÊ>ÊÃ>viÊVÞViÊvÀ>ÃÌÀÕVÌÕÀiÊ°i°ÊÃi}Ài}>Ì®ÊÊ>ÀÌiÀ>ð Conduct further research to establish the potential for cycling in the metropolitan area of Adelaide, especially in relation to short trips (up to 7km) for school, shopping and public transport.
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 57 3.11.2 Demonstration project — Vancouver style cycling lanes
Establish a demonstration project based on Vancouver, Canada, where space has been taken away from motor vehicles to create two major routes crossing the CBD for cyclists. Allocate road space for cyclists in a north- south and east-west direction, segregating the cyclist route from motor vehicle traffic and creating appropriate traffic management schemes at intersections.
3.11.3 Cycling demonstration projects — access to public transport and shops
Create evaluated demonstration projects that highlight the benefit of using bicycles for short trips to public transport nodes and local shops. En route safety and bicycle parking and storage would need to be considered in the projects.
3.12 Motorcyclists/scooters
It is not so easy to see how to fit motorised two wheelers in a Safe System approach. These transport modes are inherently dangerous, because they are usually used with relatively high speeds without offering any physical protection in a crash. Novice riders, people returning to riding after several years and young males have a relatively high risk. Traditional ways of protecting the human body (by using a helmet and a proper suit) are helpful but not enough. Motorcycles could become more safe using technologies such as Antilock Braking Systems (ABS), and good visibility of motorcycle and scooter riders may be helpful.
I recommend the development of a comprehensive strategy to reduce the risks of motorised two wheelers.
3.13 Heavy vehicles
3.13.1 Develop a vision to bring the highest safety standards to the professional heavy vehicle sector. This should cover all components of the system including management, vehicles, operations, education and accountability.
3.13.2 Traffic management techniques can be applied to facilitate the safe driving of heavy vehicles in urban areas. Where appropriate, support the industry with infrastructure treatments such as the provision of heavy vehicle lanes or segregation consistent with the functional road hierarchy.
58 FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL ACTIONS AND MEASURES
3.14 Alcohol and drugs
3.14.1 Conduct more research into the issue of recidivists with high levels of BAC and investigate:
Ê Ê Ê UÊÊÌ iÊLiiwÌÊvÊÌi}iViÊi`ÊivÀViiÌ
Ê Ê Ê UÊÊvÊÀi >LÌ>ÌÊÃÊ>ÊÀiÊivviVÌÛiÊ>ÌiÀ>ÌÛiÊÌÊ«ÕÃ iÌ
Ê Ê Ê UÊÊvÊ>««À«À>ÌiÊ`iÌiÀÀiÌÃÊiÝÃÌÊÌ >ÌÊV>Ê`vÞÊLi >ÛÕÀ° 3.14.2 Monitor European activities in establishing an evidence base in relation to drug driving.
3.14.3 Conduct further research to understand the driving risks associated with combining alcohol and drugs.
3.14.4 Make a further analysis of the problem of intoxicated pedestrians as a basis for focussed policies.
3.15 Distraction
3.15.1 Encourage public and private organisations to prohibit the use of hands-free mobile phones whilst driving as a safety based policy.
3.15.2 Create campaigns to highlight the fact that even hands-free mobile phone use whilst driving elevates risk.
3.15.3 Explore activities in relation to other in-car devices, such as navigation systems.
3.16 Fatigue
Given the established importance of sleep disorders in fatigue-related crashes, conduct further research to establish how prevalent these are in South Australia and identify potential solutions, especially when it comes to long distance rural traffic.
An opportunity also exists for the Road Safety Technology Forum to consider how vehicle technologies for detecting driver fatigue could be adopted South Australia.
3.16.1 The Road Safety Technology Forum (see recommendation 3.6.1) should consider the adoption of vehicle technologies for detecting driver fatigue.
3.16.2 Conduct further research to establish the prevalence of sleep disorders in long-distance driving in South Australia.
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 59 60 FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL ÊÊÊ 1 /1, Ê Ê Ê Ê
6. Cultural change
Part of my report addresses the issue of road safety culture in South Australia. The reason for this comes from my view that, before actually being in a position for shaping a considerably safer road transport system, we have to answer fundamental questions, such as why do road crashes continue to occur and why don’t we simply set a goal to prevent them, as is the case with rail transport and aviation? As mentioned before, road crashes are to a large extent predictable and preventable. Notwithstanding this, we seem to be reluctant to apply all possible effective and efficient countermeasures. We have a good understanding of the causal factors underlying crashes and we have a lot of knowledge about how to tackle these factors successfully, but we don’t act. This is not only the case in South Australia but in most countries worldwide. The way that we view road safety and the actions to improve it are strongly influenced by our culture. It can be very helpful to better understand the cultural factors that help, or hinder, us when trying to further improve road safety. This would be true if we try to make progress in a more traditional way. However, if we accept the Safe System approach, this issue will be even more important, as will be illustrated in this chapter.
Safety culture is a concept used in several parts of industry, such as >Õv>VÌÕÀ}]ÊV iV>Ê«ÀViÃÃ}Ê>`Ê}°Ê+ÕiÃÌÃÊ>ÀÕ`Ê safety culture arise when major events occur, for example with oil platform or mining disasters, or with aviation crashes etc. It is common practice to analyse these major incidents by paying attention to all contributory factors, and not to limit the investigation to the actions of only the operators. Safety culture basically deals with employee safety-related behaviour in the organisational setting (organisational commitment, legislation, operations, etc.) for that behaviour. This approach started in high-risk industries, but is now being translated into the road safety area as well. Although road safety culture is a widely used concept these days, this concept has lacked specificity until now. This gives me the opportunity to choose one of the available definitions and to dwell a little on it. In more general terms, three facets of cultures can be identified:
1. cognition (values, beliefs, expectations, and attitudes)
2. behaviour (rituals, ceremonial behaviour)
3. artefacts (language and symbols, laws and policies; expressions and tools of a culture).
For those who are interested, I suggest that you read a paper by Ward et al. (2010) that identifies five aspects of cognition relevant for understanding behaviour in a road safety context.
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 61 This may appear very theoretical, but hopefully some examples will make the concepts clearer. In road safety, there is a disconnection between how safe people feel on the roads and the fact that road crashes are a leading cause of death and injuries, especially among younger age groups. The individual perception of being involved in a crash is low, and in actual fact this probability is low. Even if you behave riskily, by speeding, or drinking and driving, for example, the chances of being involved in a crash are low. Driving is both a convenience and a necessity, and drivers don’t recognise the need for safe behaviour. Road users seem to feel invulnerable to a crash. Many believe that crashes happen only to ‘the other driver’: those drivers who behave poorly. Many believe that they can control their own risks. To a large extent this is true. But nevertheless, this attitude and the resulting behaviour results in a number of crashes, fatalities and injuries across the road network that we don’t regard as being acceptable.
This disconnection does not make it easy to obtain full support from individuals for interventions to prevent crashes. We have a few exceptions. One of them is that community action groups are able to mobilise actions and put pressure on decision makers. One such example is Mothers Against Drunk Driving in the United States. This organisation was started by mothers who have lost a child in an alcohol-related crash. It managed to influence decision making in the US on drinking and driving. Similar examples can also be found in relation to demanding more safety around schools. These are more the exception than the rule and I don’t believe it would be a good idea to rely fully on this type of initiative. However, such groups can be very effective!
One of the consequences of this disconnection is that the community does not ask for more interventions and this always presents governments with a dilemma, especially if these interventions will result in restricting individual liberty (seat-belt laws, speed limits), or result in additional costs to individuals (driver training, safety features in cars), or higher taxes (traffic engineering schemes). In the past, this resulted in discussions about the legitimacy of government interventions. This is an old question and I believe it has been solved by applying the ‘harm’ principle: if individual behaviour can cause harm to others, the government has the right to interfere with individual liberty, even if the individual has a different opinion. A drunk driver can injure another ‘innocent’ driver, and almost everybody believes that this ‘innocent’ driver deserves protection by limiting the individual liberty of this drunk driver. This is a widely accepted role for government intervention. The authors of Nudge (Thaler and Sunstein, 2003) do not use this principle. Instead, they found that individuals don’t know what is in their best interest. One important factor in road safety is the low chance of having a crash (it is known that people are very bad at understanding and dealing with extremely low probabilities) and the ‘optimism bias’: crashes only happen to other drivers. So, from two perspectives, I conclude a need for government interventions in road safety, not only because ‘harm to others’ is involved, but also because personal choices require some sort of paternalistic guidance, as proposed by Thaler and Sunstein.
If the government considers some sort of intervention, it would be extremely helpful if the community accepts the relevance of such an intervention. Making sound proposals with strong community support is a key element of a safety culture: is a potential intervention effective and appropriate and can the government explain that position to the community? The media can play an important role here, as can organisations such as the RAA and the voices of researchers.
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We all know, from other examples, that public acceptance can change over time and can be influenced by the mechanisms of social marketing. Perhaps it is enough to mention the example of tobacco and smoking in many (Western) societies. This is not accepted anymore and many restrictions have been made in public buildings, restaurants, airplanes and trains for example. In only one generation we can observe the dramatic positive change to public acceptance of government interventions to reduce smoking. We can see the same change when it comes to drinking and driving.
So far, I have discussed cultural elements around the road user and the community. I have established that the government has a role to play in further improving road safety and that road safety cannot be left solely in the hands of the individual road user. Ward et al. (2010) suggests that safety culture can be approached from two perspectives: from the cognitive perspective of an individual road user, and from a social perspective. Both approaches are relevant to this report. From an individual perspective, road safety culture can be defined as the perceptions that people have about what behaviour is normal in their peer group and their expectations as to how the group reacts to violations of these behavioural norms. In terms of road safety, this definition applies to behaviour that either increases crash risk (e.g. speeding) or is protective (e.g. wearing safety belts), as well as behaviour related to acceptance or rejection of traffic safety interventions (e.g. alcohol or speed limits).
Road safety culture cannot just be measured with a mean value, not taking into account diverse opinions and differences between individuals and communities. For example, in South Australia, it is of interest to distinguish between the urban/metropolitan and rural situations. These settings differ, not only because of the different classifications of locations and resulting types of crashes in these areas, but also because of structural and cultural differences between these geographical areas. The differences (Ward, 2007) relate to demography (low population size and low density), economic and social structure, and culture. In his paper, Ward gives his characteristics of rural America: reluctance to share local problems, distrust of government, traditional, conservative, provincial, slow to change, fatalistic and deterministic. He describes urban America as: modern, liberal and responsive to change. This illustrates that, when it comes to understanding road crashes, underlying cultural elements define the nature of the problem and also the opportunities for making improvements.
The most striking example is the road safety problem in aboriginal/indigenous communities. The nature of that problem, and the possibilities for addressing that problem, are completely different compared to the other part of the rural problem, not to mention the urban problem. So, if we wish to account for safety culture in road safety strategies, this distinction (urban, rural, remote) is crucial in my opinion.
A second level of culture can be approached from a societal level. Here we deal with the complex interplay between the individual, the relationship (peers, co-workers, and family members), the community (schools, working places, neighbourhoods) and the societal level. If we accept this approach in trying to influence road safety culture, we have to understand that all four levels can be influenced in order to change the behaviour of individual road users. So far, we have introduced ‘the government’ as a single entity. As we all know, this is not the case. It is important to make a distinction between elected officials, politicians, and the bureaucracy. It is worthwhile paying specific attention to elected officials, because they have to play an important leadership role. It is not easy to
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 63 see how progress can be made without giving a key role to politicians. Sometimes we call them ‘champions’; politicians who really make a difference. The introduction of a Safe System approach requires a champion, in my opinion.
The government represents a variety of stakeholders at the federal, state and local levels. I noticed a strong interest in road safety at the local level, both in the metropolitan and rural areas. Most road safety governance is provided at state level. However, I think it would be beneficial to have an increased and more meaningful role for local government in road safety than currently exists. I believe they would certainly welcome such a role. However, it is fair to say that local authorities need support for this role. Furthermore, it would be good to pay attention to the federal level and to international cooperation. I am surprised that the Australian Government has such a small role to play in road safety. This results in missed opportunities and inefficiencies. A re-entry into well-identified areas should be considered and perhaps road safety ministers in the states and territories can come forward with an attractive proposal.
I identified a variety of important players in South Australia who served with great enthusiasm in my ‘stakeholders group’ over the months that I spent there. What I tried to do, in my several meetings with them, was to make them aware of the important role they have to play. This was not necessarily just on their own, but also in a cooperative way. It is good to make the circle of interaction wider and include other stakeholders from outside the government sector (consistent with a Safe System approach).
When we talk about road safety culture, we can also talk about the culture within organisations and how individual stakeholders identify their tasks as relating to the South Australian Road Safety Strategy, how they are keeping their promises to deliver and how they are held accountable for their performance. It is my view that this concept of accountability should be strengthened, not only in the strategy, but also when monitoring progress.
Finally, I would like to say that, from a safety culture perspective, the individual level, social level and stakeholder level (politicians, policymakers, research community, media), are highly interactive. It would be good if, in South Australia, this interaction can be made transparent in order to learn how changes at one level have consequences at another level and how to use these interactions for further progress.
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4.1 The public
When it comes to road safety culture (cognition, behaviour, and artefacts) we are dealing with two main questions:
ÊUÊÊ7 ÞÊ>ÀiÊ`Û`Õ>ÊÀ>`ÊÕÃiÀÃÊ>`ÊÌ iÊVÕÌÞÊÌiÀ>Ì}Ê>Ê iÀiÌÞÊÀÃÞÊ road transport system, individual risks and more precisely risk increasing factors?
ÊUÊÊÜÊ>VVi«Ì>LiÊÀÊÕ>VVi«Ì>LiÊ>ÀiÊViÀÌ>ÊÃ>viÌÞÊÌiÀÛiÌÃÊ>`ÊÀÃÊÀi`ÕV}Ê measures?
This field is still somewhat unexplored in South Australia and I welcome an exploration of this unknown territory. It would be good to conduct social research to understand the cultural elements that form opinions on road safety. In the first year, invite a group of academics, journalists and opinion leaders together to write an essay on the topic. Construct findings from this in a similar fashion to the American Automobile Compendium on a safe driving culture. Topics such as parking, speed, road space, right turns and acceptance of risk and ‘blaming the driver’ should all be explored.
Use the outcomes to direct social research to investigate ways in which behaviour around these elements can be influenced.
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 65 4.2 Politicians
Politicians are key players for road safety at different levels (federal, state, local). It is their task to set priorities, weigh different interests, be a role model and give credible advocacy to road safety. Of course, politicians do have gut feelings and political intuition. However, when making decisions, I expect them to include evidence-based information. This evidence-based information should be to the best of the existing knowledge and impartial. This requires respected, trusted and independent sources.
Sometimes we use the word champion and, in doing that, we mean leaders who have a vision of road safety and who have the capabilities to make such a dream come true. This is not always a short-term possibility. A real champion takes decisions which turn out to be the right decisions only after a certain period of time.
My experiences from all over the world suggest that improving road safety requires support from all political parties. Support can be obtained if the different parties reach a common answer to questions such as:
Ê UÊ ÜÊÕV Ê«ÀÀÌÞÊà Õ`ÊÌ iÀiÊLiÊvÀÊÀ>`ÊÃ>viÌÞÊV«>Ài`ÊÌÊÌ iÀÊ«ÀÀÌiö
Ê UÊ 7 V ÊÃ>viÌÞÊÌiÀÛiÌÃÊ>ÀiÊÃÕ««ÀÌi`ÊÌ iÊÃ̶
ÊUÊÊ7 >ÌÊ«ÀViÊÃÊÌÊLiÊ«>`ÊvÀÊÀ>`ÊÃ>viÌÞÊw>V>ÊVÃÌÃÊvÀÊ}ÛiÀiÌÊ>`Ê citizens, limiting individual freedom)?
In South Australia, we have two main political parties represented in Parliament. I strongly believe that bi-partisan support for road safety is very important to bring two messages to the community:
Ê UÊ LÌ Ê«ÌV>Ê«>ÀÌiÃÊVÃ`iÀÊÀ>`ÊÃ>viÌÞÊ>ÃÊ>ÊÃiÀÕÃÊ«ÀLi
ÊUÊÊLÌ Ê«ÌV>Ê«>ÀÌiÃÊ >ÛiÊ>ÊÌiÀiÃÌÊÊ«ÀÛ}ÊÀ>`ÊÃ>viÌÞÊ>`Ê>ÀiÊ>LiÊ>`Ê willing to agree on the way forward.
In other words: road safety is not an area for a simple majority (50 per cent +1). The political climate of decision making should reflect this.
4.2.1 Create a climate of genuine bipartisan support for road safety.
4.2.2 Build political and administrative support for evidence led decision-making in road safety.
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4.3 Stakeholders
Improving road safety can be best considered as a shared responsibility: sharing between individual road users and stakeholders who have the responsibility of creating a safe environment for the road user. Furthermore, stakeholders will be more effective if they cooperate under the leadership of a champion, whatever form that champion might take. This can be a person, or an organisation. We can have even more champions at the same time representing different subjects. With a Safe System approach, we expect action from non-traditional stakeholders and the long list of potential actions, measures and interventions identify a wider group of stakeholders than we have been used to. Besides the government and their traditional partners, we would like to get the involvement of non-traditional partners (for example planning and health) and from the private sector/ industry. We should organise road safety policies in such a way that all stakeholders take their fair proportion of the total task. However, participating in these policies implies that organisations will be results-focussed and can be made accountable for their promises.
4.3.1 Conduct social research into the boundaries between personal responsibility and stakeholder responsibility. Insights from this can then be used to better target private sector involvement, for example.
4.3.2 Make stakeholders accountable for their contribution to reach the South Australian road safety target.
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 67 Road safety is multifaceted and there are a multitude of stakeholders who do not only have ownership of the problem, but also share the responsibilty for finding solutions.
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7. Implementation
Sound implementation of effective and efficient interventions is not as easy as it first appears. We cannot simply turn to a King of Road Safety figurehead who is responsible, or who can be made responsible for the problem and can make discretional decisions to solve the problem. Road safety is multifaceted and there are a multitude of stakeholders who not only have ownership of the problem, but also share the responsibility for finding solutions. We call this the concept of a shared responsibility.
Furthermore, we cannot easily go to a shop to purchase further road safety off a shelf. Economists consider the safety of road users as merit goods. The external costs of road crashes are not fully paid for by road users and existing insurance schemes do not cover all costs involved. Investments to improve road safety, such as road investments, are public goods. The conclusion can therefore be made that we have a strong case for public sector intervention in the road safety area.
If we accept this, it is easy to understand that public investments are not made only by one stakeholder but by a wide variety of different stakeholders. The assumption is that better alignment of stakeholders improves the performance of implementation. From both an effectiveness and efficiency perspective, such alignment certainly has advantages. However, because public organisations report to different masters and are somewhat autonomous and, because they have their own legal and democratic legitimacy, alignment has to be organised. It is also desirable that this alignment occurs with the private sector and with interest groups.
A model is often chosen to prepare a strategy in which visions, goals and interventions are summarised. When including all key stakeholders in preparing such a strategy, it is believed that stakeholders should regard themselves as co-owners of such a strategy and, by doing this, conditions are created for better implementation. This can be a complicated task if stakeholders have other roles to play, or other tasks to fulfil, and road safety is only one of these. This is the case for almost all government organisations. Much literature tells us that top level commitment is needed to commit organisations and make them effective in implementation. This is especially the case if organisations have to cooperate and coordinate. By doing so, it is anticipated that better results will be achieved or will be achieved more efficiently. An example is that police enforcement will be more effective if it is combined with mass media activities and with local community support. Therefore, I strongly recommend that stakeholders continue to be brought on board over the life of the current State Road Safety Strategy. Often the act of drafting the strategies serves as a binding ingredient for stakeholders and this process creates a solid base for the sound implementation of policies.
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 69 Of course, this cannot imply that a strategic document is simply a wish list of all individual wishes of individual stakeholders. No one will expect that. However, the end result should be acceptable for all stakeholders. Furthermore, we need leadership to draft an ambitious document that will be accepted by stakeholders. In this respect, I consider bipartisan support as a key ingredient for the success of this approach. Furthermore, positive representation by the media can be instrumental in garnishing support by the public.
From the general literature about the effectiveness of policy implementation, four core subjects can be identified that are crucial to achieving a successful (road safety) policy implementation:
1. organisational structure
2. coordination
3. funding
4. knowledge (transfer).
These can be depicted as four quadrants (as shown in Figure 7.1) and they are needed, not only for the whole road safety policy field, but also for all individual areas of policies, or even intervention types.
Organisational Structure Coordination
Funding Knowledge Transfer
Figure 7.1 Four core components necessary for sound policy implementation ‘You cannot miss one!’
A suggestion for multi-stakeholder alignment (see recommendation 5.1) is introduced. When it comes to cooperation (5.2), we distinguish between cooperation with other States (5.2.1), cooperation with the Australian Government (5.2.2) and international cooperation. (5.2.3). All this cooperation is meant to support road safety in South Australia and there are, of course, benefits in learning from the experiences of others elsewhere in Australia and in the world. I observe that cooperation with other states and territories is not fully mature yet, despite the fact that each jurisdiction experiences rather similar problems.
Road crashes occur in local government areas, although not always on roads owned by Ì i°Ê V>Ê}ÛiÀiÌÊÃÊÌ iÊiÛiÊvÊ}ÛiÀiÌÊVÃiÃÌÊÌÊ`Û`Õ>ÃÊ>`ÊVÕÌiÃ°Ê If we talk about how to give road safety ‘a voice’, my experience in a few other countries is that local communities and local authorities can act as such a voice. This results in a request ‘for more safety’. When I started to think about road safety policies in South ÕÃÌÀ>>]ÊÌÊÃÌÀÕVÊiÊÌ >ÌÊÌ iÊV>Ê>ÕÌ ÀÌiÃÊÜiÀiÊ>ÃÌÊ>LÃiÌ°Ê"vÊVÕÀÃi]ÊÌ iÊ V>Ê ÛiÀiÌÊÃÃV>ÌÊ ®ÊÀi«ÀiÃiÌÃÊÌ i]ÊLÕÌÊÊVVÕ`i`ÊÌ >ÌÊÌ iÞÊ`ÊÌÊ >ÛiÊ>Ê loud or active voice. To better understand the position of local authorities, I had meetings with several mayors and CEOs and made several visits to their areas. These included the City of Unley, the City of Prospect, the City of Mount Gambier and Port Augusta. My conclusion is that local authorities certainly have a genuine interest in improving road safety, but they need further support to make this effective (5.3).
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This brings me to another observation, that capacity building and knowledge transfer is not very well developed in South Australia. I recommend that this be developed as one of the key areas in order to create conditions for further road safety improvements (5.4). I believe this item is already an important critical factor in South Australia, and will become even more so in the future. For that reason I recommend that a centre for knowledge transfer and capacity building in South Australia be created and for me, the logical place would be CASR at the University of Adelaide.
The next, not fully explored, area is the contribution of the private sector to road safety (5.5). This can include a wide variety of activities and I recommend that a study be made of private sector contributions in other industries throughout Australia and the rest of the world to identify ways in which the private sector might contribute to road safety. Several business cases can be developed, ranging from fleet purchasing to organisational cultural change. From this perspective, I propose that several demonstration projects be attempted, hopefully resulting in good examples for others to follow. Including a safety culture in businesses is a nice example of how their role can be strengthened. Although funding is not specifically dealt with in this report, we know that a lack of funding is always an issue and it could be explored in such a way that the private sector can help in funding the implementation of several of the road safety interventions.
>ÃÌ]ÊLÕÌÊÌÊi>ÃÌ]ÊÊÃÕ}}iÃÌÊÌ >ÌÊÃViÌwVÊÀiÃi>ÀV ÊLiÊÃÌÀi}Ì ii`ÊÊ-ÕÌ ÊÕÃÌÀ>>°Ê South Australia is lucky to have the active and well-respected CASR research organisation, and the other universities expressed their interest in becoming more active in the field of road safety. This interest should be welcomed. At the same time, it is fair to state that CASR is currently the strongest participant in safety research. It is my opinion that CASR’s position and funding needs to be reconsidered. I propose that there would be a benefit in strengthening CASR as an independent, scientific research institute, also serving as a centre for knowledge transfer. I believe that CASR should not be a stand-alone organisation, but should develop itself as a network organisation. This means that not all road safety expertise is, or should be, in house, but that structural cooperation should be sought elsewhere. Hopefully, the Australian Government sees possibilities to strengthen this. A critical point is the funding of CASR. The University of Adelaide contributes relatively little funding to support CASR. The university can be proud to have such a research institute on board. This provides goodwill to the university and the university profits from the impact that CASR has on the South Australian community. It seems fair to me to invite the university to express this in terms of financial backing; for example, in supporting more PhD research. When considering the position of CASR in the road safety community in South Australia, I think that CASR can be positioned more carefully to be independent of policymaking (researchers cannot be made responsible for policy decisions; they should support decision making with knowledge and research results). An annual progress report can be a powerful instrument for improving road safety and it seems to me that CASR is the appropriate institute to carry out this review (as it will be the best positioned institute to carry out modelling work for setting realistic road safety targets).
By way of conclusion, I will end with a few remarks about the organisational structure of road safety in South Australia. I am of the opinion that it is time to reconsider the existing role and composition of the Road Safety Advisory Council as a high-level advisory group. As described earlier in this report, I propose a taskforce under the leadership of the Premier with support from the Minister for Road Safety to develop strategies for implementing a Safe System approach in South Australia. I propose that this taskforce
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 71 includes representatives from: political leaders (other ministers, but also an elected representatives from the local authorities) and key stakeholders, such as the RAA, MAC, the Police, the Department for Education and Child Development, the Department for i>Ì Ê>`Ê}i}]ÊÌ iÊ i«>ÀÌiÌÊvÊ*>}Ê>`Ê V>ÊÛiÀiÌ]ÊÌ iÊ ]ÊÌ iÊ Office for Youth, and the Council of the Ageing. CASR can continue to play an important role as an impartial adviser providing knowledge for decision making when scientific knowledge is available. Decisions for this taskforce could be prepared by several working groups. I recommend four of them in this report: UÊ ->viÌÞÊÊ1ÀL>Ê*>} UÊ ,>`Ê->viÌÞÊ/iV }ÞÊÀÕ UÊ ,iÃÕÀViÊ iÌÀiÊvÀÊ `ÕV>Ì UÊ iÃ}ÊÕ`iiÃÊ,iÛð My recommendation would be to decide, at the end of the work of the taskforce, what the best organisational structure for road safety in South Australia will be.
Besides the organisational structure, we have to be aware of one other important development. As improving road safety will become an increasingly multi-stakeholder activity, implemented by non-traditional road safety organisations, in which road safety goals will be balanced against other policy goals, we have to change our perspective on implementation. Instead of strengthening road safety in its traditional areas, we also need to see implementation as a coordination process in a multi-stakeholder setting. Only when road safety is integrated into other policy areas will we have better success. This is similar to the approach proposed for the health sector by another Thinker in Residence, Ilona Kickbusch with the ‘Health in all policies’ concept (Kickbusch, 2010).
It is very challenging to achieve a Safe System approach in a multi-stakeholder setting. This Safe System approach should act as a mobilising and motivating concept to include other key stakeholders. Success will only be reached if the road sector is able (and willing) to build new and trusting coalitions. I see this as a very important task for the road safety directorate in DPTI for the coming years: a new house should be built and the foundation will be laid by the taskforce under the leadership of the Premier and the Minister for Road Safety.
I make the following recommendations to assist with the implementation of a Safe System approach in South Australia. 5.1 Multi stakeholder alignment
Ensure that over the next decade the road safety strategy for South Australia is a stakeholder strategy and not only contain actions and responsibilities for government departments. 5.2 Cooperation
5.2.1 Cooperation with government authorities interstate
Pursue more formal information exchange and policy testing mechanisms with interstate counterparts. South Australia can benefit by cooperating and coordinating road safety policy with other jurisdictions.
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5.2.2 Cooperation with the Australian Government
South Australia should lobby with other states for more leadership from the Australian Government in the areas of: Ê Ê Ê UÊÊÛi ViÊÃ>viÌÞ Ê Ê Ê UÊÊÃ>viÌÞÊÌiV }Þ Ê Ê Ê UÊÊ`>Ì>Ê >ÀÃ>ÌÊLiÌÜiiÊÕÀÃ`VÌÃ Ê Ê Ê UÊÊ>Ì>ÊÀi}Õ>ÌÊÀivÀÊi°}°Ê -Ê>`ÊViÃ}® Ê Ê Ê UÊÊÀ>`ÊÃ>viÌÞÊÀiÃi>ÀV ° 5.2.3 International cooperation
Explore, at all levels, ways in which South Australia can benefit by cooperating with other organisations involved in road safety.
5.3 Strengthening local authorities
5.3.1 More interest in road safety
Encourage local government to take more of an interest and an active role in road safety. The ‘grass roots’ support for road safety initiatives needs to be captured and channelled as a force for change in adopting Safe System «À>VÌViÃ°Ê V>Ê}ÛiÀiÌÊÃÊLiÌÌiÀÊ«>Vi`ÊÌÊi}>}iÊÊ`ÃVÕÃÃÃÊ>LÕÌÊ cultural change with residents.
5.3.2 Role in education
Consider the role of local government in contributing to road safety education in local schools.
5.3.3 Use of traffic intelligence
Develop more formal protocols for communication with the police to optimise intelligence for traffic enforcement purposes and include feedback for local government.
5.3.4 Capacity building
ÊÊ Ê ÃÌ>LÃ Ê>ÊÀiÃÕÀViÊÕÌÊÜÌ ÊÌ iÊ ÊÌÊiÃÕÀiÊÌ >ÌÊÃÕÌ>L Ê iÊÜi`}iÊ and capacity around the concept of Safe Systems is built over the next decade. The resource unit should allow local authorities to access assistance in implementing Safe Systems. CASR and DPTI should contribute to this resource.
5.3.5 Local Government Road Safety Plans
Ê Ê Ê ÃÊÕÃÌÊ`iÛi«ÊÀ>`ÊÃ>viÌÞÊ>VÌÊ«>ÃÊÛiÀÊÌ iÊiÝÌÊ`iV>`i° A three-tier approach is suggested:
Ê Ê Ê UÊÊÊ iÛi«iÌÊvÊ>ÊÌi«>ÌiÊvÀÊ>Ê ÊÀ>`ÊÃ>viÌÞÊ>VÌÊ«>ÊÜÌ Ê assistance from DPTI)
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 73 Ê Ê Ê UÊÊ1ÃiÊ`iÃÌÀ>ÌÊ«ÀiVÌÃÊÌÊwiÊÌÕiÊÌ iÊÌi«>Ìi
Ê Ê Ê UÊÊÊ ÃÕÀiÊÌ >ÌÊ ÃÊÕÃiÊÌ iÊÌi«>ÌiÊÌÊVÀi>ÌiÊÌ iÀÊÜÊÀ>`ÊÃ>viÌÞÊ>VÌÊ plans.
5.3.6 The reporting of road safety statistics
The reporting of road safety statistics in annual reports should be made >`>ÌÀÞÊÛ>Ê>ÊV >}iÊÊÌ iÊ V>ÊÛiÀiÌÊVÌÊ£Î{®Ê>ÃÊÃÊÌ iÊV>ÃiÊ with some environmental reporting.
5.4 Capacity building and knowledge transfer
5.4.1 Build professional capacity
Train and attract new, dedicated professionals in the field of road safety in South Australia. The public universities should be resourced to make further efforts in this area.
5.4.2 Education of road safety professionals
For dedicated road safety professionals:
Ê Ê Ê UÊÊ`iÛi«ÊVÕÀÃiÃÊvÀÊ«ÀviÃÃ>ÊÀ>`ÊÃ>viÌÞÊÌÀ>}
Ê Ê Ê UÊÊÊÃiiÊ««ÀÌÕÌiÃÊÌÊÃÌÀi}Ì iÊÕ`iÀ}À>`Õ>ÌiÊÌÀ>}ÊvÊ«ÀviÃÃ>ÃÊ in road safety
Ê Ê Ê UÊÊi}>}iÊvÕÀÌ iÀÊÊ«ÃÌ}À>`Õ>ÌiÊÌÀ>}° For professionals who occasionally deal with road safety, develop courses for professional road safety training.
5.4.3 Centre for knowledge transfer and capacity building
Allocate resources to CASR, the main road safety research centre in South Australia, to provide knowledge transfer and capacity building activities for road safety amongst public and private organisations. Activities that should receive further expansion include:
Ê Ê Ê UÊÊ>ÊvV>ÊÀ>`ÊÃ>viÌÞÊÜiLÃÌiÊvÀÊÌ iÊ-Ì>Ìi
Ê Ê Ê UÊÊ>ÊÀi}Õ>ÀÊÀ>`ÊÃ>viÌÞÊiÜÃiÌÌiÀ
Ê Ê Ê UÊÊÊÊÌ iÊ>Û>>LÌÞÊvÊÀ>`ÊÃ>viÌÞÊ`>Ì>ÊÛ>ÊÌ iÊÌiÀiÌÊÌ iÊ -,Ê7iL/,ÃÊ software could provide a mechanism for achieving this).
5.5 Private sector involvement
The private sector should have a role in promoting road safety policies among its staff (a safety culture) and the community.
74 FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL ÊÊÊ * //" Ê Ê Ê
5.5.1 Safety culture
Conduct a study to identify the range of ways in which cooperation can occur with private industry to adopt road safety policies. An assessment should then be made of different sectors to estimate which models of cooperation would best suit the adoption of various road safety policies.
Some initiatives to be pursued include: Ê Ê Ê UÊÊ>`«ÌÊvÊÌ iÊÃ>viÃÌÊÛi ViÃ Ê Ê Ê UÊÊL>}Ê >`ÃvÀiiÊLiÊ« iÊÕÃiÊÜ ÃÌÊ`ÀÛ} Ê Ê Ê UÊÊÌÀ}Ê`ÀÛiÀÊLi >ÛÕÀÊÊV«>ÞÊÛi ViÃ Ê Ê Ê UÊÊVÃiµÕiViÃÊvÀÊi«ÞiiÃÊV>Õ} ÌÊ`ÀÊ`ÀÛ}° 5.5.2 Demonstration project
Based on the outcomes of the cooperation model study, conduct some demonstration projects amongst different sectors.
5.5.3 Funding for prevention
Explore circumstances in which private companies would be willing to contribute towards road safety initiatives for communities (e.g. in rural and remote areas).
5.6 Strengthening research
5.6.1 Scientific cooperation
Explore opportunities for scientific cooperation with interstate research organisations with a focus on Safe System principles and their practical applications. As is the case throughout Australia, road safety research capacity in South Australia relies on a few individuals and this position should be strengthened.
5.6.2 Centre for Automotive Safety Research programming
The academic standing of CASR can be further improved by reconsidering the balance between core scientific research, project-based research and knowledge transfer activities. Core research could also receive further support from the University of Adelaide.
5.6.2 The three universities — University of Adelaide, University of South Australia, Flinders University
Identify opportunities to strengthen research centres amongst the three universities and continue efforts towards cooperative research.
5.6.3 Analysis
CASR should produce more independent road safety progress reports and reviews for South Australia.
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 75 References
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ÀÃÌÀ>Ê ]Ê Þ>Ê ]Ê ÃÃÊ]Ê À`âÊ*]Ê*iÌÌiÀÃÊ]Ê7i}>ÊÊ>`Ê7ÕÌiÀÃÊ*Ê (2002). SUNflower: A comparative study of the development of road safety in Sweden, the 1Ìi`Ê }`]Ê>`ÊÌ iÊ iÌ iÀ>`ðÊ-7"6]Ê i`ÃV i`>]Ê/ iÊ iÌ iÀ>`ð Koornstra, M.J. Mathijssen, M.P.M. Mulder, J.A.G. Roszbach, R. & Wegman, F. (1992). Naar een duurzaam veilig wegverkeer : Nationale Verkeersveiligheidsverkenning voor de >ÀiÊ£äÉÓä£äÊ\ÊÛiÀÛ}Ê«Êi`iÀiiÊiÌÊÜiÊi>`°°½°Ê i`ÃV i`>]Ê-7"6°
/-ÊÓäää®°Ê,>`ÊÃ>viÌÞÊÃÌÀ>Ìi}ÞÊÓä£äÆÊÊVÃÕÌ>ÌÊ`VÕiÌ°Ê >Ì>Ê,>`Ê->viÌÞÊ ÌÌii]Ê >`Ê/À>ëÀÌÊ->viÌÞÊÕÌ ÀÌÞÊ /-]Ê7i}Ì]Ê iÜÊ>`° OECD/ITF (2008). Towards Zero - Ambitious Road Safety Targets and the Safe System Approach. Paris, France.
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7>À`]Ê °°]Ê iL>V ]Ê°]Ê iiÀ]Ê-° °Ê>`Ê"ÌÌ]Ê°ÊÓä£ä®°Êº7 ÌiÊ*>«iÀÊÊ/À>vwVÊ Safety Culture” in the series: White Papers for “Toward zero deaths: a national strategy for highway safety” – White Paper No.2, Western Transportation Institute, College of Engineering Montana State University.
7i}>]ÊÊ>`Ê>ÀÌÃ]Ê ÊÓääx®°Ê`Û>V}Ê-ÕÃÌ>>LiÊ->viÌÞÊÊÌ iÊ iÌ iÀ>`Ã°Ê Proceedings of the 3rd Traffic and Road Safety International Congress / Exhibition, Volume 2.
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7i}>]Ê°]Ê ÃiÀ]Ê6°]Ê>ÞiÃ]Ê-°]Ê Þ>]Ê °]Ê ÀÃ]Ê*°ÊEÊ"««i]Ê-°ÊÓääx®°Ê-1 yÜiÀ³È\Ê a comparative study of the development of road safety in European countries. SWOV, i`ÃV i`>]Ê/ iÊ iÌ iÀ>`ð WHO (2008). The Global Burden of Disease - 2004 update. World Health Organisation, Geneva, Switzerland.
7Õ`iÀÃÌâÊ ]Ê >`VÊ ,ÊÓ䣣®Ê/ iÊÀi>ÌÛiÊVÌÀLÕÌÊvÊÃÞÃÌiÊv>ÕÀiÃÊ>`Ê extreme behaviour in South Australian crashes (CASR092), Centre for Automotive Safety Research, Adelaide.
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 77 78 FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL ÊÊÊ "7 /- Ê Ê Ê
Acknowledgements
“Observation is tremendously important for an artist – intense observation – because without it memory never develops. Memory gradually builds up from observation. The greater the observation the greater the power to build a painting”
These phrases were delivered by Hans Heysen and I found them in The Cedars, his house in Hahndorf in the Adelaide Hills, where painter Hans Heysen lived for 56 years. His oil and watercolour paintings impressed me greatly; particularly the colours of the Australian landscape in which the gum trees are caught in a light full of atmosphere. He begins his phrases with observation, intense observation, as the starting point of a beautiful painting.
Hans Heysen’s words are equally true for scientists. Intense observations are essential parts of the scientific process. Intense observations are also crucial in the Thinkers in Residence program carried out in South Australia. The program gave me the opportunity to make observations, by looking, by speaking, by participating, by entering into discussions, by being part of, by reading letters to the editor, et cetera.
The Thinker programme is based on an excellent concept that is very well thought out. I express my gratitude to former Premier Mike Rann for this initiative which, as far as I know, is unique in this world. A good export product, I would say! Based on the many experiences that were gathered during the years that this programme has been carried out, its layout and execution have been brought to perfection. Add a very professional Adelaide Thinkers in Residence staff and the success of this program is explained. And this also explains how I, as the nineteenth Thinker in Residence, could flourish and achieve. It was a marvellous experience to be part of this program and I wish to take this opportunity to thank everyone who was part of my journey and made it possible for me to make ‘my painting’.
‘My painting’ is completed with the publication of this report. I hope and expect that there regularly will be visitors to look at my painting and be inspired by it. Inspired to improve the safety of the South Australian road traffic. It is my strong conviction that further improvements can be achieved and I hope that this report offers points of departure.
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 79 ‘My painting’ is a project that has been accomplished with the help of many people and I am grateful for the contributions, in whatever form, that were made by so many in the completion of this report. My memories of the many conversations and encounters are precious to me, and these conversations were an indispensable part of ‘my observations’. And, as Hans Heysen indicated: “the greater the observation the greater the power to build a painting”.
Writing acknowledgements and the mentioning of names is always a perilous, almost hopeless undertaking. You do not want to overlook anyone and, indeed, mention everyone. And everyone knows that this is an impossible task.
There are four groups of people I wish to thank in particular. Firstly, those who took the initiative to think of me and offer me the role of Thinker in Residence: Martin Small and Phil Allen of DPTI. Especially Martin deserves my special gratitude. He had a central role in my residency and I would like to present my painting to him in particular. Secondly, of course, the staff of the Adelaide Thinkers in Residence office, Gabrielle Kelly, Denise Maddigan and Joe Hay in particular. You, and all other staff members gave me tremendous support. Each time it was difficult again to say goodbye at the end of my visits to South Australia. I feel a strong connection with you. This second group is followed naturally by both ‘catalysts’. Initially Hermann Rademeyer, who was followed by Jeremy Woolley. I have conducted many fruitful conversations with Jeremy, and my painting is his painting. Jeremy was a vital link between me and real life road safety in South Australia. The fourth and final group I would like to mention are all the participants in my partner group. They have influenced me, I learned from their insights, and I have tried to influence them. My specific request for them is to study my painting regularly and to be inspired by it. I have looked for your support and was given it. I hope that this will lead to further steps being taken in continuing road safety improvement in South Australia.
Many of my thoughts found their way to the new Road Safety Strategy in South Australia, which was published in 2011. I must say that this is gratifying. I am optimistic about the results of the plan being put into practice.
80 FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL 67 Bringing world leading thinkers to
Adelaide to assist with the strategic
development of South Australia.
www.thinkers.sa.gov.au
FRED WEGMAN : DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD TOLL