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Road Safety Management

This document is a report on road safety management submitted by 4 students at Savitribai Phule Pune University. It contains 7 chapters that discuss topics like the need for road safety management in India, the current scenario of road safety in India, causes of road accidents and remedies, behavioral training for drivers, policies to improve road safety, monitoring and evaluation, and research on road safety. The report finds that road accidents are a major public health issue in India, causing around 92,000 deaths annually. Comprehensive road safety management is needed to address this issue through improvements to infrastructure, vehicles, laws, health services, and other areas.

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Nilesh Bhadane
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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
72 views23 pages

Road Safety Management

This document is a report on road safety management submitted by 4 students at Savitribai Phule Pune University. It contains 7 chapters that discuss topics like the need for road safety management in India, the current scenario of road safety in India, causes of road accidents and remedies, behavioral training for drivers, policies to improve road safety, monitoring and evaluation, and research on road safety. The report finds that road accidents are a major public health issue in India, causing around 92,000 deaths annually. Comprehensive road safety management is needed to address this issue through improvements to infrastructure, vehicles, laws, health services, and other areas.

Uploaded by

Nilesh Bhadane
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 23

A

Report on

“ROAD SAFETY MANAGEMENT”


By

Nilesh Bhadane (A-18)

Himanshu Dalal (A-34)

Ganesh Gautam (A-47)

Rushikesh Gawale (A-50)

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for

S.E. (Civil Engineering)

2017-2018

SAVITRIBAI PHULE PUNE UNIVERSITY

DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL ENGINEERING


Guru Gobind Singh Foundation’s

Guru Gobind Singh College Of Engineering& Research Centre Nashik-422009


ROAD SAFETY MANAGEMENT

CONTENTS

CHAPTER TITLE PAGE NO

1. CHAPTER – 1INTRODUCTION 4

1.1 Why do we need road safety management? 4

Myths about road transport safety management


1.2 5
system
CHAPTER – 2 CURRENT SCENARIO OF
2. 7
ROAD SAFETY IN INDIA
CHAPTER – 3 THE CAUSES AND REMEDIES
3. 10
OF ROAD ACCIDENT.
CHAPTER – 4 BEHAVIORAL TRAINING FOR
4. 14
DRIVERS FOR IMPROVING ROAD SAFETY
The Effectiveness of Driver Training for Young
4.1 14
and/or Recently Licensed Drivers
The Effectiveness of Driver Training for
4.2 15
Experienced Drivers
CHAPTER – 5 POLICYMAKERS CALL FOR
5 16
MORE ROAD SAFETY MANAGEMENT

5.1 Policymakers for more road safety 16

5.2 Achieving ambitious road safety results 17

CHAPTER – 6MONITORING AND


6 19
EVALUATION
Establishing and/or supporting a range of data
6.1 19
systems

6.2 Why Monitoring and evaluation Necessary? 19

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CHAPTER – 7RESEARCH AND


7 DEVELOPMENT AND KNOWLEDGE 20
TRANSFER
CONCLUSIONS 22

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CHAPTER – 1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Why do we need road safety management?

Road Safety is a multi-sectoral and multi-dimensional issue. It incorporates


thedevelopment and management of road infrastructure, provision of safer
vehicles,
Legislation and law enforcement, mobility planning, provision of health and
hospitalservices, child safety, urban land use planningetc. In other words, its ambit
spans engineeringaspects of both, roads and vehicles on one hand
And the provision of health and hospital servicesfor trauma cases (in post-crash
scenario) on theother. Road safety is a shared, multi-sectoral,responsibility of the
government and a range ofcivil society stakeholders. The success of road
Safety strategies in all countries depends upon abroad base of support and common
action fromall stakeholders.

At a plenary meeting of the UnitedNations General Assembly on 14th


April 2004, aresolution co-sponsored by India expressedgrave concern about the
large number offatalities in road crashes. The World Health
Organization also declared the year 2004 as theYear of Road Safety and launched
WorldHealth Day in April 2004 with the slogan –“Road safety is no accident”.

The World Report on Road Traffic Injury


Prevention of the World Bank and World Health Organization (WHO) in the year
2004stated that road traffic injuries are a major but neglected global public health
problem requiring concerted efforts for effective and sustainable prevention. Of all
the systems that people have to deal with on a day-to-day basis, road transport is
the most complex and the most unsafe mode of transportation. The tragedy behind
the regularly occurring road crashes attracts less media attention than other, less
Frequent but more unusual types of tragedies. The report forecasts that without any
increased effort and new initiatives, the total number of road traffic injuries and
deaths worldwide would rise by 65 per cent between 2000-2020whereas in low-
income and middle-income countries,deaths are expected to increase by as much
as80 per cent. The majority of such deaths are atpresent of “vulnerable road users,
pedestrians,pedal cyclists and motorcyclists”. In high-
Income countries, deaths among car occupants continue to be predominant but risk
per capitathat vulnerable road users face is high. There port also underscored the
concern about thedetrimental impact of an unsafe road transport system on public
health and global development.Obviously, the level of road deaths and injuries is

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unacceptable and to a large extent avoidable. Thus, there is an urgent need to


recognize
the worsening road safety situation in order totake appropriate action. Road traffic
injuryprevention and mitigation should be given thesame attention and scale of
resources that arecurrently being channeled towards otherpredominant health
issues, if increasing humanloss and injury on the roads, with theirdevastating
human impact and large economiccost to society are to be avoided.

According to WHO statistics (year 2002)about 11.8 lakh people die every year in
roadaccidents, the world over, of which 84,674deaths are reported to take place in
India

In 2004 the number of deaths had increased to 92,618. The mortality rate in India
is 8.7 per hundred thousand populations as compared to 5.6 in UK, 5.4 in Sweden,
5.0 in The Netherlands and 6.7 in Japan. In terms of mortality per
10,000 vehicles, the rate in India is as high as 14 as compared to less than two in
developed countries. The cost of road crashes has been assessed at one to two per
cent of GDP in developed countries. A study by the Planning Commission in 2002
estimated the social cost of road accidents in India at Rs.55,000 crore annually
(2000 prices), which constitutes about 3 per cent of the GDP.

With massive investment in roads and the exponential growth in the number of
vehicles it has become necessary to have a system, which integrates all disciplines
that influence road safety and which at the same time would have
Linkages with established institutions that cater to the different aspects of road
safety viz. engineering, education, enforcement, medical and behavioral sciences

1.2 Myths about road transport safety management system

a)“de-regulation” - the Indian legislation on road transport safety management do


not eliminate existing regulatory requirements and all legal provisions, which have
got the influence on safety of road carriages, both passengers and
cargo; reasonably, the legislation on road transport SMS act as an umbrella
requirement, enabling road transport undertakers to better meet the existing
requirements of the rules, regulations
and standards;
b)“self-regulation”-the road transport SMS regulations will came into effect under
the Provision on Road Traffic Safety Management System. As such,
Ukrainian supervision authorities have the mandate to monitor compliance with the
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regulations as it does with any legislated requirement. While the regulations put the
responsibility on the road transport companies to proactively demonstrate
their management of safety, the public services oversee compliance with the
regulations.
c)“eliminating inspections”-inspections are an important component of the
enforcement of road transport legislation, and they continue to be used as part of
the assessment of SMS in road transport undertakings, or as a separate
inaccuracy activity.
d)“eliminating corrective action”-
companies are required to comply with the road transport SMS regulations as
with all regulatory obligations. This includestherequirement for road transport
to take corrective actions for any safety concerns and
incidents of non-compliance identified by the regulator.

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CHAPTER – 2 CURRENT SCENARIO OF ROAD SAFETY IN


INDIA

The magnitude of road traffic accidents, fatalities and injuries in India as per
Government data is quantified in Table 1.While the figure of fatalities may be
close to the actual number of deaths in road accidents in India, the number of
injuries reported appears

Table 1: Road accident statistics

Various studies indicate that the actual number of injuries could be 15 to 20 times
the number of deaths. The discrepancies in the number of deaths and injuries are a
result of the application of different methodologies for the derivation of estimates.
Furthermore, these figures do no account for growth in motor vehicle numbers in
the coming years. The estimated number of deaths, serious and minor injuries for
the years 2005 and 2015 are provided in Table 2.

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Table 2: Estimated road accident statistics for the years 2005 and 2015

The following figure shows the trend of road traffic fatalities in India over the past
45 years. It reveals that both absolute number of fatalities (bold line) and the
fatalities per100,000 population (dotted line) have been increasing monotonically.

Fig No-1

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It is apparent from the above figure that morbidity and mortality from road
accidents is increasing rapidly. Road accidents victims are predominantly male,
within the age group of5-44 years (>70%), the most productive section

of our society. Children saved earlier from communicable and infectious diseases
are now becoming victims of this man made epidemic. However, there is no
organized programme to combat morbidity and mortality on Indian roads while
there are structured programmes to combat communicable diseases, with
substantive allocation of plan funds.

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CHAPTER – 3 THE CAUSES AND REMEDIES OF ROAD


ACCIDENT.
India is beset with many problems and the root cause of all problems is over-
population. Road accident is one of them and nowadays it has become national
catastrophe or crisis for India. Everyday road accident is taking away enormous
innocent lives ruthlessly. Whenever we turn over the newspaper pages every day,
we find such types of unexpected road crashes news. Day after day we are
becoming helpless to the street accidents. Now it is the greatest concern for India
to reduce death tolls and injured people which are being occurred for sudden road
accidents. It has even become dreadful to walk on the busiest roadside in the urban
areas. Now I am trying to depict some causes of occurring road crashes briefly. No
individual is responsible for causing road accidents singly. There are various
reasons for occurring road crashes in India.

1. The carelessness and inexperience of Drivers.

2. Most of the drivers have no driving license.

3. Defective and obsolete vehicles.

4. Paucity of roads and narrowed roads.

5. The trend of competing while driving.

6. The overtaking tendency of injudicious drivers.

7. The scarcity of required number traffic police.

8. Violating the traffic rules by both drivers and mass people.

9. Spurious oil used in vehicles.

10. The lack of dividers in the roads.

11. The lack of over-bridges.

12. The extreme carelessness of crossing roads.

13. The lack of knowing the rules of crossing the roads.

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14. The excessive plying of rickshaws and vans in the urban areas.

15. The illegal occupying of footpath by the hawkers.

16. The illegal constructions and markets closing with roads.

17. Lack of knowledge about traffic rules by the rickshaw pullers and van drivers.

18. The carelessness and irresponsibility of traffic police.

19. Political instability, strikes, protests or hartals force to occur traffic congestion
and sometimes this congestion turns into accidents.

20.The lack of adequate plans by the government to reduce road casualties.

21. The lack of implementation of strict traffic laws.

22. The reckless driving by the careless drivers.

Road accidents are snatching our valuable lives and property mercilessly. We the
mass people along with government should be aware of assuaging street accidents
and the government should take cautionary, effective and prompt actions to reduce
this problem. In recent time the government has become initiated bring it under
control but those steps are not enough to face this challenge. I am delineating some
remedies of reducing this problem in brief.

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1. The drivers should be inspired to drive consciously.

2. The plying of illegal rickshaws should be banned in urban areas and in highway
roads.

3. The parking of vehicles in unscheduled places should be prohibited.

4. The expertness and qualification of drivers should be cautiously looked over


before offering licences.

5. The drivers without licence should be brought into trial.

6. The drivers should check their vehicles carefully before stepping down on the
roads.

7. The indicted drivers of occurring accidents should be brought into trial and the
punishment should be ensured by forming quick trail.

8. The spurious driving licences offered by some dishonest officials of BRTC


should be investigated neutrally and the detected perpetrators should be ensured
stern punishment.

9. The illegal occupancy of footpath by the hawkers should be evicted.

10. The strict traffic laws should be followed by everyone.

11. The required number of traffic police should be appointed.

12. The vigilance on the activities of traffic police should be increased to boost the
services.

13. The overtaking tendency must be stopped.

14. The illegal crossing by the general people must be stopped.

13. The required number of over-bridges must be built.

14. The alternative roads should be constructed to stop the plying of people and
rickshaws in the highway roads.

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15. Illegal extortion must be stopped on the streets.

16. Mass awareness is the very crucial fact for reducing this problem.

17. Defective and obsolete vehicles should be vanished from the roads.

18. The hastiness of getting down and into the buses by the people must be
stopped.

19. The prevailing traffic laws need to be reformed.

20. The services of public buses should be promoted.

The unconditional remedy of reducing this problem is to stop the excessive flow of
population. The excessive population is the main cause of making our country
crippled.

Road accident should be declared as the national disaster and the prompt and
effective actions are much needed to mitigate this problem. The more delay to take
actions, the more death tolls to be brought.

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CHAPTER – 4 BEHAVIORAL TRAINING FOR DRIVERS FOR


IMPROVING ROAD SAFETY
4.1 The Effectiveness of Driver Training for Young and/or Recently Licensed
Drivers

Few programs specifically target novices in the first few years of solo driving.
However, some young/recently licensed drivers will seek out and attend
commercial post-licence driver training on their own initiative or on the advice of
others who believe that this may improve their driving skills and reduce crash risk.
At face value, this has some intuitive appeal. Novice drivers are at greatest crash
risk in the first six months of solo driving. However, there would appear to be little
evidence that training programs undertaken by young and/or recently licensed
drivers are effective in reducing crash risk or traffic violations. Some better-based
programs target higher order skills (eg perceptual/cognitive skill development
dealing with hazard perception and risk reduction) and attitudinal factors such as
over confidence and optimism bias (iewhere novices believe that they are skillful
and at little risk of crash involvement). As with other areas of novice driver
training, there is no clear evidence that post-licence training for novice drivers
leads to reductions in crash or violation involvement. Again, such training often
leads to an increase in confidence and sometimes and increase in crash risk for
novices, particularly young males. 9,14 From a theoretical perspective, there is
support for the development and application of training that targets optimism bias,
over-confidence and attitudinal/motivational factors that influence safe driving
behaviour. 14 Several programs using this better-based approach – sometimes
referred to as “Insight” training - have been trialed in India. However, there is little
evidence thus far that this type of training reduces crash/violation risk among
novices as few crash-based studies of these newer approaches to training have been
completed. Preliminary evaluation of a recent Finnish program for novices – it
targets risk avoidance and speed control six to 24 months after initial licensing -
suggests that it may have contributed to a significant reduction in crashes,
particularly among males, but had less impact on females. 39 While novice drivers
under this program tended to drive less than those exposed to the former training
approach and a downward trend in crashes for all drivers was experienced in

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Finland, the authors concluded that the new approach contributed to statistically
significant reductions in crashes among novice drivers.

Training for novices, beyond basic-pre licence training, is generally limited in its
capacity to shape and change driver behaviour. Alternatives to training such as
increased experience at the pre-licence level combined with graduated licensing
and on-road enforcement regimes may hold more promise at present.

4.2 The Effectiveness of Driver Training for Experienced Drivers

Reviews of evaluation studies have found no sound evidence that either advanced
or defensive driving courses reduce the accident involvement of experienced
drivers who attend them. 3,6,7 This is unremarkable as experienced drivers
(particularly those aged 25-59 years) already have a relatively low crash risk per
distance travelled.32There is some evidence from US studies that some programs
may reduce traffic offence recidivism among those assigned to driver improvement
programs, but this does not seem to translate into reduced crash involvement. 40,41

Some driver training providers claim that their programs produce accident
reductions, particularly in fleet settings. Many of these claims are often based on
small samples, testimonials or data derived by non-scientific means.3 Claims of
crash reductions due to training intervention often disappear when the effects of
other factors are taken into account. Driver training may be more effective in fleet
settings than for drivers in general, but Swedish and

India research suggests that other more economical measures such as group
discussion on safety issues and incentive programs may be more effective in crash
reduction terms

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CHAPTER – 5 POLICYMAKERS CALL FOR MORE ROAD


SAFETY MANAGEMENT

5.1 Policymakers for more road safety


In response to the global crisis of road traffic injury as emerging economies
motorize, the UN General Assembly resolution 64/255 of March 2010 (UN
Resolution) proclaimed 2011–2020 the Decade of Action for Road Safety, with a
‘global goal of stabilizing and then reducing the forecasted level of global road
fatalities by 2020’ by increasing activities conducted at national, regional and
global levels with the focus primarily on local and national action.

Resolution 64/255, requested the World Health Organization and the United
Nations regional commissions, in cooperation with the United Nations Road Safety
Collaboration and other stakeholders, to prepare a Plan of Action for the Decade as
a guiding document to support the implementation of its objectives. In addition,
Resolution 64/255 invited the World Health Organization and the United Nations
regional commissions to coordinate regular monitoring, within the framework of
the United Nations Road Safety Collaboration, of global progress towards meeting
the targets identified in the plan of action through global status reports on road
safety and other appropriate monitoring tools. The Global Plan establishes five
pillars: road safety management, safer roads and mobility, safer vehicles, safer
road users and post-crash response (UNRSC, 2012).
The Global Plan states that the Decade of Action goal will be attained through:
adhering to and fully implementing the major United Nations road safety related
agreements and conventions, and use others as principles for promoting regional
ones, as appropriate; developing and implementing sustainable road safety
strategies and programmers;

 setting an ambitious yet feasible target for reduction of road fatalities by


2020 by building on the existing frameworks of regional casualty targets;
 strengthening the management infrastructure and capacity for technical
implementation of road safety activities at the national, regional and global
levels;
 improving the quality of data collection at the national, regional and global
levels
 monitoring progress and performance on a number of predefined indicators
at the national, regional and global levels;

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 encouraging increased funding to road safety and better use of existing


resources, including through ensuring a road safety component within road
infrastructure projects;
 building capacities at national, regional and international level to address
road safety.

5.2 Achieving ambitious road safety results

Establishing long-term and interim safety performance goals and targets


supported by action plans that set out the specific interventions needed to achieve
them is well established as international good practice (OECD, 2008, 2002, 1994;
Bliss & Breen, 2009 & 2013; Bliss, 2004; Aeron-Thomas, 2002). However, as the
OECD has noted, setting ambitious targets is one thing; meeting them is another.
Without new effort, leadership and strengthened management capacity, the OECD
concludes that many member countries will not meet their highly ambitious targets
(OECD, 2008). Likewise, ‘action plans’ prepared without a designated agency
mandated to lead their implementation and a realistic and sustainable funding base
are likely to remain ‘paper’ plans and make no positive impact on results (Bliss &
Breen, 2009 & 2013).

Road safety performance is shaped by the road safety management system


operating in a country or an organisation. This system determines the results being
sought and produces the interventions to achieve them. The limits to a country or
organisation’s road safety performance are constrained by its institutional capacity
to implement efficient and effective interventions, and the subsequent results may
fall short of what is technically feasible with any particular set of road safety
interventions (Bliss & Breen, 2009 & 2013; OECD, 2008).

The World Report of Road Traffic Injury Prevention (Peden, 2004) and the
follow up World Bank Transport Note (Bliss, 2004) focusing on implementing its
recommendations highlighted the importance of addressing road safety
management weaknesses and the need for effective institutional management as a
pre-requisite of successful results-focused intervention. Further implementation
guidelines based on good practice institutional management have been produced
by the World Bank (Bliss & Breen, 2009 & 2013) and a new global ISO 39001

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standard sets out a road safety management framework for organisations in general
(Hartzell, 2011, ISO, 2012).

The Safe System approach represents the new safety culture and performance
frontier. Countries have become progressively more ambitious in terms of the
results they want to achieve culminating in ambitious Safe System approaches.
Safe System is based on Sweden’s Vision Zero (Tingvall, 1995) and the
Netherlands’ Sustainable Safety (Wegman&Elsenaar, 1997; Wegman et al., 2005)
Safe System represents the new safety culture and performance frontier for road
safety management embracing long-term goal to eliminate death and serious injury
(as recommended by the OECD to all countries (OECD, 2008), necessitating
challenging but achievable interim targets, exacting intervention strategies and the
need for strengthened institutional management systems (Bliss & Breen, 2009 &
2013; OECD, 2008).

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CHAPTER – 6 MONITORING AND EVALUATION

6.1 Why Monitoring and evaluation Necessary?

Monitoring and evaluation completes the management loop back to ‘results focus’
in a country results-based management system and comprises systematic
performance of all the elements of the road safety management system. Monitoring
and evaluation’ function is addressed by three main functions (Bliss & Breen,
2009).

 Establishing and/or supporting a range of data systems to set and monitor


final and intermediate outcome and output targets.
 Transparent review of the national road safety strategy and its performance
along the dimensions of results, interventions and institutional management
functions.
 Making any necessary adjustments to interventions and institutional outputs
needed to achieve the desired results.

6.2 Establishing and/or supporting a range of data systems

Periodic monitoring and evaluation of road safety targets and programs is essential
to assess performance and to allow adjustments to be made. The establishment and
sustainable funding of transport registries for drivers and vehicles, crash injury
databases and periodic survey work to establish performance and exposure data is
typically the responsibility of several different Government agencies - transport,
police, and health. In some countries, Government insurance departments or
organisations and university departments also share responsibility. Theorganisation
of independent inspection, audit and review are also part of this function (Bliss &
Breen, 2009).

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CHAPTER – 7 RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT AND


KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER
This vital institutional management function has guided the design and
implementation of national strategies that have sustained reductions in road deaths
and injuries, in the face of growing mobility and exposure to risk (Peden et al.,
2004), (Bliss & Breen, 2009). It aims to produce a cadre of international, national
and local professionals who can contribute research-based approaches and
knowledge to road safety policy, programs and public debate. Knowledge transfer
must be grounded in actual practice in a ‘learning by doing’ model, backed with
sufficient targeted investment to overcome the barriers presented by the evident
capacity weaknesses at the global, regional and country levels. Strong and
sustained international cooperation will be required to mobilise knowledge transfer
resources and support services commensurate with the sheer scale of the global
losses arising from escalating road deaths and serious injuries (OECD, 2008; ITF,
2016).

Good practice countries believe that research, technical support and knowledge
transfer underpin their road safety performance and ensure that this sector is well-
supported. Key activities include:

 Developing capacity for multi-disciplinary research and knowledge transfer


 Creating a national road safety research strategy and annual programme
 Securing sources of sustainable funding for road safety research
 Training and professional exchange
 Establishing best practice guidelines
 Setting up demonstration projects (Bliss & Breen, 2009).

In some good practice countries, multi-disciplinary road safety research forms part
of a national research strategy with a dedicated government budget. This includes
behavioural studies; road crash injury research, biomechanics and vehicle design;
road safety engineering; post-impact care; demonstration projects; and the
development of standards for national and international legislation. Some countries
have set up external advisory panels to help define the national programme.
Appropriate levels of human and public financial resource need to be invested in a
national road safety research programme. National and community research – as

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opposed to relying solely on international research – is important for identifying


local problems and localized groups at increased risk of road injury. Separation of
the research and evaluation functions from the operational aspects of road safety
management gives independence and credibility to public policy research (Bliss &
Breen, 2009).

In Europe, the Forum of European Road Safety Research Institutes (FERSI), the
Passive Safety Network (TNO Advanced Passive Safety Network) and the
European Enhanced Vehicle Safety Committee (EEVC), have comprised the
principal road safety research networks over the last decade and new networks are
emerging with the assistance of the EU Framework Programme. FERSI’s mission
is to:

 Provide a forum for developing collaborative research projects aimed at


producing solutions to common road safety problems within European
countries
 Provide support to the European Commission in defining research needs
within Europe
 Encourage the exchange of good practice and research knowledge between
countries and
 Encourage closer co-operation and, where appropriate, the exchange of
researchers between countries

Knowledge transfer in road safety is promoted and supported by a wide range


of international and national agencies e.g. the World Bank and its Global Road
Safety Facility and World Health Organisation, the FIA Foundation for the
Automobile and Society and the Global Road Safety Partnership are currently
preparing a series of good practice intervention guides on road safety to assist
country implementation of the recommendations of the World Report on Road
Traffic Injury Prevention. The World Health Organisation has produced a
training programme (TEACH VIP) with a road traffic injury prevention
component as well as a recent training manual (www.who.int). The OECD has
carried out international reviews of road safety best practice for many years
(www.oecd.org).

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CONCLUSIONS

Overall, the research evidence suggests that driver training of a conventional


nature contributes little to reductions in accident involvement or risk among
drivers of all ages and experience groups. Low individual crash risk and
decayof learning work against the potential effectiveness of driver training
programs that concentrate on car control skillsor deal with rare events such
as emergencies.Improving driver knowledge and skill does not always lead
to a change in on-road behaviour or reduced crash riskamong trainees. While
skill and knowledge are important, they have little influence on the driving
environment orconditions under which driving behaviour occurs post
training. Conventional driver training is also unlikely to undo
firmly established past learning nor durably alter motivation or modify
underlying personal values. It is of concern that the provision of
conventional driver training beyond that required to gain an initial driver
licenceoften leads to increased accident risk among novice drivers. Research
suggests that this is due to encouragement of
earlier licensing, increased exposure- to- risk and/or unduly increasing the
confidence of novices about their driving abilities.

A better alternative for novice drivers is to address the lack of experience


factor which has been shown to contribute to first year drivers having an
elevated casualty accident risk. This approach has been taken up by most
Australiandriver licensing jurisdictions and some in North America via the
implementation of Graduated Licensing schemes
(GLS) which provide for and encourage learner drivers to build their stocks
of supervised, on-road driving experience before solo driving. Swedish
research suggests that it contributes to post-licence reductions in casualty
crashes of up to 35%. However, this approach requires cooperation between
novice drivers, parents (or supervisors)
and commercial driving instructors over a period of months and perhaps
years.
Resources committed to post-basic driver education/training may also act to
undermine effective road safety

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programs by diverting scarce funds and community attention away from


more worthwhile initiatives likely to reduce crash risk. However, there is
some suggestion that due to its high face validity and popularity, driver
trainingmay have a place in risk reduction programs in fleet settings, but
only as an adjunct to other more effective accidentreduction measures.
At present, one could not say that driver training is an effective crash
countermeasure. Other approaches such as increased supervision and
graduated licensing for novice drivers and traffic law enforcement for all
drivers are likelyto make greater and more lasting contributions to road
safety.

Guru Gobind Singh College Of Engineering & Research Centre, Nashik Page 23

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