Identifying and designing for the needs of older road users

The number of older road users is continuously increasing over time. Whilst much research focuses on the likely impact on road safety, little work has been carried out examining the impact on older people themselves of their declining ability to cope with the road environment. Additionally, it is known that because of their increased frailty older drivers are more at risk of sustaining a fatal or serious injury than younger roadusers. Consequently older people often feel pressured by family members, health practitioners or an increasing inability to deal with traffic conditions, into giving up driving in favour of some other form of transport. However, the subsequent effect of this may actually be to increase the risk exposure of older people. The aim of this study was to use an accident-independent approach to collect detailed information on the interaction between behaviour, perceived and actual risk and use of transport systems, using both quantitative and qualitative techniques. A focus group and interviews were conducted with older road-users to gain an initial insight into their experiences and perceptions of safety whilst using the UK road infrastructure (including roads, pavements, cycle tracks, pedestrian crossings etc.). Additionally, analysis was undertaken of UK exposure data and casualty rates for older road users. The qualitative and quantitative data sources were compared and contrasted. Older people felt at risk using the road system, and many of these perceptions were upheld according to the statistical reports. Not all of the issues raised by older road-users can be dealt with by improving design, but this study presents a set of recommendations, which, if implemented would increase the safety of all road users

Recommendations for establishing Pan European Transparent and Independent Road Accident Investigations

A set of recommendations for pan-European transparent and independent road accident investigations has been developed bythe SafetyNet project. The aim of these recommendations is to pave the way for future EU scale accident investigationactivities by setting out the necessary steps for establishing safety oriented road accident investigations in Member States.This can be seen as the start of the process for establishing road accident investigations throughout Europe which operateaccording to a common methodology.The recommendations propose a European Safety Oriented Road Accident Investigation Programme which sets out theprocedures that need to be put in place to investigate a sample of every day road accidents. They address four sets of issues;institutional addressing the characteristics of the programme; operational describing the conditions under which data iscollected; data storage and protection; and reports, countermeasures and the dissemination of data

Building the European Road Safety Observatory. SafetyNet. Deliverable D4.1 Bibliographical analysis

The notion of independence, as commonly used, is somewhat fuzzy. Some public bodies, such as the Federal Reserve System in the United States or the European Central Bank are independent. The Court of Justice of European Communities is also an independent and autonomous institution. These institutions have characteristics consistent with the formal definition of the notion of independence. They are independent, in the limits of their missions, because they are not subject to outside control. They are separate and do not take instructions from other public bodies. They are financially autonomous and the members of these institutions themselves are qualified and independent. In relation to the field of research, the meaning of independence does not seem excessively problematic. As for the central banks or the judicial institution, a certain amount of independence –independence of the entity, that of the researchers and of the research itself– would be vital for the impartiality and the quality of the research process and its results. Therefore, an independent accident investigation body should not be subject to outside control in the pursuit of its mission. It should be separate from other bodies, public or private, having financial or other interests in the results of its investigations. It should not take instructions from other bodies or outside personalities. It should have adequate control over the use of its investigation results. Finally, it should be financially autonomous and its members be qualified and independent themselves. In the United States, the contrast between National Transportation Safety Board and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is most interesting. While NTSB has a solid reputation as an investigation body, wearing several hats puts NHTSA in a somewhat uncomfortable position. In that particular case, the main problem seems to arise from the ties it has to the manufacturers as the authority responsible for the safety regulations and for the safety investigation. In Europe there are several Directives or Regulations, as well as a White Paper, a Communication from the Commission and a Work Programme, that concern transport safety. In the field of civil aviation, there are two specific European Directives: 1. Council Directive 94/56/EC of 21 November 1994 establishing the fundamental principles governing the investigation of civil aviation accidents and incidents; and 2. Directive 2003/42/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 June 2003 on occurrence reporting in civil aviation The purpose of a safety (or accident) investigation, the authorised methods and practices, as well as the definitions have been set by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) since the 1944 Chicago Convention. Accident investigations in Europe and worldwide rely on the Chicago Convention Annex Bibliographical Analysis Project co-financed by the European Commission, Directorate-General Transport and Energy sn_inrets_wp4_d4.1_14/11/2005_final Page 5 13. The first version of the Annex 13 was drafted in 1951; the current version (9th) was agreed upon in 2001. The European Directives’ focus is on the structural, financial and functional independence of the investigating body. National laws adapting the international and European requirements concerning the independence of the safety investigation and of the investigation body exist in all studied Member States, namely in Germany, France, Italy, Finland and United Kingdom. All these Member States have an independent civil aviation accident investigation body. In the field of maritime transport, there is one general European Directive: 1. Council Directive 1999/35/EC of 29 April 1999 on a system of mandatory surveys for the safe operation of regular ro-ro ferry and high-speed passenger craft services The purpose of a safety (or accident) investigation, the methods and practices, as well as the definitions have been set by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO). The accident investigation in Europe and worldwide tends to respect the IMO Code for the Investigation of Marine Casualties and Incidents, agreed upon by the Resolution A849/20 from 1997. The European Directive structures the maritime transport in a quite general manner. It is not specific to accident investigation and does not require the Member States to establish an independent investigation body. However, the Directive’s aim is to ensure the harmonised enforcement of some principles agreed upon within the IMO, particularly the IMO Code for the Investigation of Marine Casualties and Incidents. The IMO Code states that ideally an investigation on a marine casualty should be separate from, and independent of, any other form of investigation. Therefore, while the Member States have no formal obligation to establish an independent investigation body for the investigation of marine casualties, this remains an objective. National laws adapting the international and European recommendations concerning the independence of the safety investigation and of the investigation body exist in Germany, France, Finland and United Kingdom. In the field of rail transport, there are three general Directives: 1. Council Directive 91/440/EEC on the development of the Community's railways amended by the 2. Directive 2001/12/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 February 2001; and 3. Directive 2004/49/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council on safety on the Community's railways The purpose of a safety (or accident) investigation, the methods and practices as well as the definitions are set by the 2004 Directive. It requires the Member States to establish an independent accident investigation body. The European Directives’ structure the rail transport in a quite general manner. The International Union of Railways (UIC) uses the European definitions for its Bibliographical Analysis Project co-financed by the European Commission, Directorate-General Transport and Energy sn_inrets_wp4_d4.1_14/11/2005_final Page 6 Safety Data Base project. National laws adapting the European requirements concerning the independence of the safety investigation and of the investigation body exist or will shortly be acted in all studied Member States. In the field of road transport, there are no European Directives or Regulations nor any other international legal framework. National laws on safety (or accident) investigation and the investigation body exist in France and in Finland. Italy, Germany and United Kingdom have opted for separate investigation bodies for different transport modes. France has opted for separate investigation bodies for civil aviation and maritime, while all the land transports are investigated by one body. Finland has an investigation body for civil aviation and all major accidents, whether they involve a mode of transport or not, and another system for investigating road and cross-country accidents. It is clear that road accident investigations differ from the accident investigation in other transport modes. Only two of the Member States, whose accident investigation practices have been assessed, have a legal national framework applicable to road accident safety investigation. In France, the decision on opening a safety investigation on a road accident is taken by the Minister of Transport. In 2004, only three accidents involving road traffic vehicles were investigated. In Finland, all fatal road accidents and some non-fatal road accidents are investigated. On average, some 500 road accidents, of which 370 fatal, are investigated annually. The bulk of the research in road safety in all involved Member States, with the exception of Finland, is therefore made by research bodies that do not have the legal status of a body responsible for conducting safety (or accident) investigations

Building the European Road Safety Observatory. SafetyNet. Deliverable D4.3: Draft recommendations for transparent and independent accident investigation – a working paper

Building the European Road Safety Observatory. SafetyNet. Deliverable D4.3: Draft recommendations for transparent and independent accident investigation – a working pape

Building the European Road Safety Observatory. SafetyNet. Deliverable D4.2 Database transparency

Road transport and all road transport related industries are clearly very important to European economy and societies. In terms of impact to European employment for instance, road transport is probably the most important transport sector. On the other hand, the relatively poor road safety – accidents, those killed and injured, material damage and other socio-economic costs – constitutes a major socio-economic problem. While road safety has recently emerged as an issue on all political decisionmaking levels, it was for a long time neglected compared to the issue of safety in the public transport modes, such as rail, air and maritime. This delay and the requirement of independence for accident investigating entities in the public transport modes result from the characteristics of different transport modes. Independence of an investigation body is to be understood as a means of assuring its impartiality – and that of the investigations it conducts. However, the independence of the investigation body and processes do not resolve the question of the quality of investigations. The quality of the investigation work relies certainly on the impartiality of the investigating body and processes, but also on the qualifications and experience of the investigators, as well as the investigation methods they use. It is not independence, but transparency that best describes these aspects of accident investigation. We shall define transparency as the availability of such relevant information on the accident investigation, which allow its quality to be assessed. In this deliverable, we have applied the concept of transparency only to databases, but it does apply to all accident investigation results: data, case studies or accident reports and any other subsequent data. Investigation bodies frequently cooperate with similar bodies from other countries or with other stakeholders (manufacturers, operators, regulators, consumers etc.), for specific accident investigations, and such interrelations strengthen their impartiality. In quite a similar manner, transparency can be further facilitated by the use of international methods and standards. The process of building a European road safety community through Commission supported research programmes is important in creating interrelations between research institutes and in creating progressively a body of common European accident investigation methods, standards, data and knowledge. The reviewed databases can roughly be divided in two categories. There are the police collected data that, in spite of their drawbacks, have the advantage of being national. The percentage of under-reporting and under-recording can be quite consequent, but this is rather irrelevant when national statistics are used for continued trend monitoring for instance. On the other hand there are the research oriented databases, whose uses are specific and depend on the research objectives. In some cases such databases might result for instance from legal obligations set for insurers, and might even contain police or other extensive data from certain areas and for longer periods. Other databases have been designed for a one-off use. Database transparency Project co-financed by the European Commission, Directorate-General Transport and Energy sn_inrets_wp4_d4.2_final_03/02/2006 Page 5 All the databases reviewed in this deliverable are, according to our evaluation, transparent. In other terms, there is sufficient information available on all the relevant aspects of these databases for assessing their actual quality. Making quality evaluations was not an objective of this work package and we have not proceeded to such quality evaluations. The principal reason for this is the fact that databases cannot be evaluated against a single scale. They have been designed for answering specific questions and should be judged on the basis of how well they reach that particular objective. The establishment of criteria for evaluating the transparency of accident investigation data (databases in this deliverable) was in itself a challenging task. Nevertheless we felt it had to be completed by some considerations on the use of accident investigation data and the limits that should be set to transparency. The only necessary limit that should be set to the transparency of accident investigation data is the right to privacy. Individual, identifiable accident level data should not be made publicly available – unless such data is necessary for understanding the circumstances and the sequence of events in case of major accidents (like the public transport accidents frequently are). There is another limitation to the transparency of accident investigation data, which results from the nature of that data. The investigation data is not just “observed” but is “constructed” according to specific, well-defined methodological choices. The process of data gathering, which begins with the choice of some particular pieces of information amongst a large number of details about an accident and ends with synthesized data, is a rather complex process and calls for specific qualifications and experience. The same is of course true –unfortunately perhaps – for appreciating the investigation results and participating to any debates about their scientific quality. While this limitation is real and has to be accepted, there is no need – quite the contrary – to conceal information from the public. Transport safety in all transport modes is an issue of public interest and adequate1 safety information, including accident investigation data, has to be publicly available. Sometimes public will misinterprete some of the available data, which will need to be dealt with. In any case, this would be a far lesser evil than having to constantly reassure the public that important safety related information is not being concealed