Advances In Road Safety Planning

In recognition of the importance of road safety as a major health issue, the World Health Organization has declared 2011-2021 the Decade of Safety Action. Several countries in Europe, North America, and Asia have been successful in reducing fatalities and injuries due to road traffic crashes. However, many low-income countries continue to experience high rates of traffic fatalities and injuries. Transport Planning and Traffic Safety: Making Cities, Roads, and Vehicles Safer offers a source book for road safety training courses as well as an introductory textbook for graduate-level courses on road safety taught in engineering institutes. It brings together the international experiences and lessons learned from countries which have been successful in reducing traffic crashes and their applicability in low-income countries. The content is based on lectures delivered during an international course on transportation planning and traffic safety, sponsored annually by the Transportation Research and Injury Prevention Programme (TRIPP) at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. The book is interdisciplinary and aimed at professionals—traffic and road engineers, vehicle designers, law enforcers, and transport planners. The authors examine trends in performance of OECD countries and highlight the public health and systems approach of traffic safety with the vulnerable road user in focus. Topics include land use (transportation planning, mobility, and safety), safety education and legislation, accident analysis, road safety research, human tolerance to injury, vehicle design, safety in construction zones, safety in urban areas, traffic calming, public transportation, safety laws and policies, and pre-hospital care of the injured.

TRB Special Report 289: Building the Road Safety Profession in the Public Sector examines the growing need for experts at all levels of government to develop and implement systems- and science-based approaches to road safety management. According to the committee that authored the report, the lack of professional recognition and comprehensive road safety education and training opportunities is threatening the ability of public agencies to build the knowledgeable and skilled road safety workforce that is needed to make safety advances. To address this need, the report recommends that the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials and the Governors Highway Safety Association forge a broad-based alliance of public, private, and educational organizations to champion the road safety profession. The report recommends that the alliance encourage states to take advantage of federal workforce training funds for the purpose of developing road safety professionals and to advocate comprehensive road safety education and training by universities, including the many publicly funded transportation and safety research centers. In addition, the report urges the alliance to explore the creation of one or more specialized institutes to provide comprehensive instruction and training for road safety professionals.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration requires each state to submit an annual Highway Safety Plan as a prerequisite for obtaining federal section 402 safety monies. The Highway Safety Plan serves as more than a mechanism for obtaining funds; it induces planning, programming, and budgeting of highway safety projects at both the state and local levels. Virginia's highway safety planning process has evolved over the past 10 years to become an organized, efficient system which applies the "Problem Identification/Management by Objectives" concept to the requirements of the Highway Safety Plan. Towards strengthening this process, the master file project was initiated in 1976 to supply timely data to the state agencies and local transportation safety commissions for use in their problem identification, countermeasure development, and program evaluation activities. Since that time, the activities involved in preparing the Highway Safety Plan have been refined and streamlined to effect a more efficient system of retrieving, assimilating, and disseminating the highway safety program data. This report outlines the recent progress of the master file project, and describes advancements towards automating the information that have been achieved in the state agencies in conjunction with the Highway Safety Plan.

This comprehensive Road Safety Guide in the form of a Practical Handbook illustrates how Improperly Designed and Poorly Constructed Roads and Highways remained as Passive Causes of Road Traffic Accidents that claim approximately 1.42 to 1.45 lac lives annually since last few years, for no fault of road users. The author drove 19,110 kms in 58 days on outer peripheral National Highways, connecting State Highways, City, Town and Village Roads prior to authoring this book to collect first hand information and ground realities of roads in India. He categorized such defects as Passive Causes of Road Traffic Accidents and Deaths, and documented them for the first time in India. He disproved the general belief that the majority of Road Traffic Accidents and Deaths are caused due to Over Speeding & Drunken Driving on handling 12,383 motor accident insurance claims. Through an in-depth study, he concluded that 57.5% Road Traffic Accidents are caused due to Improper Road Design, Poor Construction Quality and Defects on the Roads and Highways. Such Observational Research is not carried out anywhere in the world till date.

This volume addresses a variety of issues on traffic safety policy, ranging from issues of climate change, urban equity, and transport safety, in a broad global and societal context, while retaining situation-specific details. Written by international experts on issues of transportation and traffic safety, it will be of special interest to advanced researchers in the engineering and planning disciplines working on these issues as well as policy makers concerned with setting up institutions and legislations for traffic safety.

Contains summaries of the knowledge regarding the effects of 128 road safety measures. This title covers various areas of road safety including: traffic control; vehicle inspection; driver training; publicity campaigns; police enforcement; and, general policy instruments. It also covers topics such as post-accident care, and speed cameras.

Today, citizens advocate greater environmental sustainability, better services and the improvement of urban quality by promoting safer mobility, especially for the most vulnerable road users. Addressing these issues, Town and Infrastructure Planning for Safety and Urban Quality contains papers presented at the XXIII International Conference “Living and Walking in Cities” (Brescia, Italy, 15-16 June 2017). The contributions discuss town planning issues, look at best practices and research findings across the broad spectrum of urban and transport planning, with particular attention to the safety of pedestrians in the city. The main topics of the book are: - Urban regeneration. A focus on walkability (vulnerable road users; boosting and planning soft mobility) - Road safety and urban planning - vulnerable road users: planning for safety (integrated land use and transport planning; methodological approaches and case studies; integrated tools for town and transport planning; shaping public spaces and walkability; transport solutions for tourism) - Innovative and traditional solutions for Italian cities - Extra-European approaches to town and infrastructure planning - Different perspectives in road safety: prevention, infrastructure, sharing - Advances in road safety Town and Infrastructure Planning for Safety and Urban Quality is a powerful plea for a multi-disciplinary and comprehensive approach to urban mobility and planning, and will be of interest to academics, consultants and practitioners interested in these areas.

The face of the pedestrian safety crisis looks a lot like Ignacio Duarte-Rodriguez. The 77-year old grandfather was struck in a hit-and-run crash while trying to cross a high-speed, six-lane road without crosswalks near his son’s home in Phoenix, Arizona. He was one of the more than 6,000 people killed while walking in America in 2018. In the last ten years, there has been a 50 percent increase in pedestrian deaths. The tragedy of traffic violence has barely registered with the media and wider culture. Disproportionately the victims are like Duarte-Rodriguez—immigrants, the poor, and people of color. They have largely been blamed and forgotten. In Right of Way, journalist Angie Schmitt shows us that deaths like Duarte-Rodriguez’s are not unavoidable “accidents.” They don’t happen because of jaywalking or distracted walking. They are predictable, occurring in stark geographic patterns that tell a story about systemic inequality. These deaths are the forgotten faces of an increasingly urgent public-health crisis that we have the tools, but not the will, to solve. Schmitt examines the possible causes of the increase in pedestrian deaths as well as programs and movements that are beginning to respond to the epidemic. Her investigation unveils why pedestrians are dying—and she demands action. Right of Way is a call to reframe the problem, acknowledge the role of racism and classism in the public response to these deaths, and energize advocacy around road safety. Ultimately, Schmitt argues that we need improvements in infrastructure and changes to policy to save lives. Right of Way unveils a crisis that is rooted in both inequality and the undeterred reign of the automobile in our cities. It challenges us to imagine and demand safer and more equitable cities, where no one is expendable.