FORMULATION OF SAFETY OBJECTIVES

Safety objectives as targets are treated in the frame of the general aim 'traffic safety' and traffic safety is presented as one of the goals of the traffic system as well as of the individual road user. The general approach of the paper is that although traffic safety aim is to reduce accidents, those events in traffic which are closely connected to accidents and are more available for studying i.e. Traffic conflicts, road user errors and road user behaviour in general, need to be studied systematically in order to formulate safety objectives. Different models of error classification and genesis are presented. Three main directions of formulating safety targets are reducing errors, reducing accident consequences and changing the relationship between errors and their consequences, i.e. Accidents. Reduction of accident consequences, i.e. Passive safety is out of scope of the paper. The approach presented in the report is suitable for formulating safety objectives which fit to the directions of reducing errors and changing the relationship between errors and accidents, with the main stress on the latter aspect. The different approaches to the problem of risk in traffic and the role of risk in the recent driver behaviour models are discussed and several driver behaviour models are presented and critically analyzed. A model of road user behaviour is outlined which takes the different levels of influence (social, traffic-culture relevant, permanent-and momentary personal, interpersonal, situational, etc,) on road user behaviour into consideration. The possiblities of application of the approach in formulating safety objectives are presented by two examples of traffic conflict and road user behaviour observation studies. This package forms work package 5 of the drive project 1040.

• Corporate Authors:

  Lund University of Technology, Sweden

  Institution for Traffic Engineering, Fack 725
  S-220 07 Lund 7,   Sweden 
• Authors:
  • DRASKOCZY, M
  • HYDEN, C
  • RISSER, R
• Publication Date: 1989

Language

• English

Media Info

• Pagination: 27 p.
• Serial:
  • Lunds University of Technology Trafiktekn Bulletin
  • Issue Number: 85
  • Publisher: Lund University of Technology, Sweden

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Behavior; Classification; Crashes; Drivers; Errors; Injury severity; Risk taking; Safety; Scale models; Structural models; Travelers
• ITRD Terms: 1643: Accident; 9001: Behaviour; 8513: Classification; 1772: Driver; 6440: Error; 6205: Model (not math); 2259: Risk taking; 1755: Road user; 1665: Safety; 1623: Severity (accid, injury)
• Subject Areas: Bridges and other structures; Safety and Human Factors; Society;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00604918
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: Transport and Road Research Laboratory (TRRL)
• Files: ITRD, TRIS
• Created Date: Feb 28 1991 12:00AM