Road safety risk evaluation and target setting using data envelopment analysis and its extensions

Designing a composite indicator for road safety

Benchmarking road safety performances of countries

Strengthening incentives for efficient road safety policy priorities: The roles of cost–benefit analysis and road pricing

BackgroundAccording to WHO’s Global Status Report on Road Safety 2023, global road traffic crash (RTC) deaths decreased. However, they increased in most of the low-and-middle-income countries (LMICs). Research suggests systemic...

Road safety policy measures are meant to improve road safety, i.e., to reduce the number of people injured or killed in road traffic crashes. Despite the obvious benefits of such policy measures, often public support is low, because often such measures require road users to give up some of their freedom of movement. In this chapter, it is shown how differences in national culture are associated with differences in the level of public support for a range of policy measures. National culture can be operationalized into several dimensions. Using data from a recent update of two of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions (labeled as “Independent” and “Confucianist”), it is first shown that these dimensions are strongly associated with economic indicators and road safety performance. Subsequently, it is illustrated that these dimensions can also be good predictors for public support for several road safety measures, in particular when these are perceived to restrict freedom of movement.

Self-reported behavioural data, being often linguistic variables that represent a qualitative measure of respondents’ opinions/attitudes, are vague, uncertain, and fuzzy in nature. A road safety performance index, based on these fuzzy data, should consider this uncertainty. In this study, fuzzy numbers were used to describe self-reported behaviour on Montenegrin roads, which was further integrated into the data envelopment analysis (DEA), a technique for measuring the relative performance of decision-making units (DMUs). The vagueness of the performance scores obtained in this way was treated with grey relational analysis (GRA). GRA was applied to the cross-efficiency (CE) matrix constructed by the DEA to distinguish Montenegrin municipalities’ performance, with the main goal of describing road safety in the observed territories in the environment of uncertain/grey data. It is concluded that the proposed DEA–GRA model, based on fuzzy data, provides a more reasonable and encompassing measure of performance, and with which the overall ranking position of municipalities can be obtained.

Road traffic accidents claim approximately 1.25 million lives globally each year, with low-and middle-income countries bearing over 90% of these fatalities despite accounting for only 48% of the world's registered vehicles.Sub-Saharan Africa, in particular, faces severe road safety challenges due to inadequate infrastructure, weak enforcement of traffic laws, and rapid urbanization.This study introduces the Road Safety Performance Index (RSPI), a comprehensive composite index comprising 13 key indicators, to evaluate and compare road safety performance across 20 Sub-Saharan African countries.Using 2020 data from reputable sources such as the World Bank, government reports, and academic publications, the study employs multiple regression analysis to identify critical factors influencing road safety outcomes.The results reveal significant disparities in road safety performance across the region.Mauritania emerged as the top performer with an RSPI score of 92.03, excelling in areas such as traffic law enforcement and road infrastructure quality.Conversely, Ethiopia and Nigeria demonstrated notable opportunities for improvement, particularly in traffic safety law enforcement and pedestrian safety measures.Key factors influencing road safety performance include urbanization rates, GDP per capita, alcohol consumption, and the quality of road infrastructure.The RSPI provides a robust framework for policymakers and stakeholders to prioritize targeted interventions, allocate resources effectively, and foster cross-country knowledge exchange.By addressing critical challenges such as poor road infrastructure, distracted driving, and urban traffic congestion, Sub-Saharan African countries can significantly reduce road traffic accidents, injuries, and fatalities.This study contributes to the growing body of knowledge on road safety in low-and middle-income countries and underscores the importance of evidence-based strategies to create safer and more sustainable transportation systems.

The article presents the results of the development of an integral indicator of road safety - the road safety coefficient. The value of the road safety coefficient shows how many times, at the same levels of motorization, the risk of death of a resident in road traffic (social risk) decreased/increased in comparison with the average social risk that existed in the world in the 40s of the last century, when there were no special programs on improving road safety. The use of the road safety coefficient allows you to compare the level of road safety in countries and regions with different populations and different levels of motorization. It is shown that social risk is a complex indicator, the value of which depends on the indicators of road safety at a lower level - the probability of participation of a resident in road traffic, which is equal to the value of motorization, the probability of death of a road user (transport risk), the probability of a road accident (active road safety), the intensity of road accidents (reliability of driving) and the average annual mileage of the car, the probability of death in a road accident (passive and post-accident safety). An equation is obtained that relates the value of social risk to the values of lower-level road safety indicators. The analysis of the level of road safety in Kyrgyzstan is carried out. It is shown how the condition of the traffic flow affects its average speed and the probability of road accidents. The influence of traffic flow density on its average speed and intensity of road accidents is considered. To assess the impact of the condition of a traffic flow on its average speed and road safety, the concept of the conventional density of a traffic flow is used. It is revealed that in the road conditions of Kyrgyzstan there is a critical conventional density, when exceeding it the transport risk, the probability of a road accident and the probability of death in a road accident begin to decrease rapidly with a further increase in the conventional density. The low efficiency of detection of exceeding a permitted speed when measuring the maximum speed of cars at certain points is shown. It is proposed to use the measurement of average speed on certain road sections as a means of reducing the number of drivers exceeding the speed limit.

Data envelopment analysis (DEA) provides a relative efficiency measure for peer decision making units (DMUs) with multiple inputs and outputs. While DEA has been proven an effective approach in identifying the best practice frontiers, its flexibility in weighting multiple inputs and outputs and its nature of self-evaluation have been criticized. The cross efficiency method was developed as a DEA extension to rank DMUs with the main idea being to use DEA to do peer evaluation, rather than in pure self-evaluation mode. However, cross efficiency scores obtained from the original DEA model are generally not unique, and depend on which of the alternate optimal solutions to the DEA linear programs is used. The current chapter discusses various cross efficiency approaches in dealing with non-unique solutions from DEA

In this paper, three risk indicators on road safety (i.e., traffic fatalities per vehicle, per traveled kilometer and per inhabitants) are combined into a composite indicator in order to assess the overall fatality risk for the 27 Brazilian states. The so-called multiple layer data envelopment analysis (DEA) model is used in this respect. Given their remarkable diversity in terms of road safety context, the states are first clustered (into four clusters) and next, a range of bootstrapped scores is generated to manifest the estimated variability in the road safety performance of each state. Bootstrapping the original DEA scores showed to be a useful strategy to assess the robustness of the states’ ranking, which is subjected to uncertainties in input information and DEA model determinism.

Objectives Road safety is a vital public concern aimed at preventing road-related injuries and fatalities. Assessing road safety status can be effectively conducted using performance measurement tools, which help identify areas for improvement and guide the development of targeted safety strategies. Methods This study evaluates the road safety performance of Chinese provinces from 2018 to 2020 using an undesirable data envelopment analysis model and the meta-frontier approach to measure input-output efficiency. Results During the three-year period, two, three, and two provinces, respectively, achieved efficiency scores considered as benchmarks. Clustering analysis grouped the performance into three tiers, with Beijing and Shanghai consistently in the highest-performing tier. Provinces in eastern China demonstrated relatively stable and high performance across all years. Meanwhile, Guangxi, Qinghai, and Guizhou showed potential for reducing undesirable output by over 80% annually. Changes in scores for 20, 19, and 20 provinces were driven by differences in production frontier technologies over time. A comparative evaluation incorporating desirable output offers an additional perspective on performance measurement. Conclusions This research presents a framework for assessing road safety performance using both undesirable and desirable outputs and offers insights for policymakers to understand regional safety variations under diverse economic contexts.

Car drivers' road safety performance: A benchmark across 32 countries

Teaching and learning road safety has been recommended as a core strategy in both nation and international levels. In Thailand, the Ministry of Education has launched a policy to integrate...

As the road authority for the unclassified (i.e. local) roads in their local government area, councils have the legislated responsibility to manage their road infrastructure; this fundamentally includes the safety of road users on their networks. Almost 70% of the 392 fatalities on NSW roads in 2017 occurred on country roads (Transport for NSW, 2018). The contribution of the local road network to road trauma across Australasia is significant with over half (52%) of all fatal and serious injuries recorded on roads that are the sole responsibility of local government (McTiernan et. al., 2016). Governments at all levels - Local, State and Federal – can no longer ignore the contribution of local roads to the national tragedy and trauma occurring each year. Without a concerted effort by all tiers of government to address road safety performance on the vast local road network, Australia will not achieve the 30% reduction target in fatal and serious injuries as set out in the National Road Safety Plan. Unfortunately, the current status for managing safety on local roads sees a myriad of systemic hurdles and failures that ultimately result in local government not making road safety a genuine priority. But what is required to change this situation? Two case studies are presented to assist a discussion about some of the systemic failures that contribute to local councils not taking, or not being able to take, action to make road safety a genuine priority.

BackgroundThe Safe System/Vision Zero approach (SSA) has a well-developed set of concepts, practices and methods like human tolerance, humans make mistakes, unacceptability of road traffic deaths and serious injuries, shared...