Towards safe system infrastructure investment on New Zealand roads: a technique for maximising serious trauma savings

The Macro Estimates for Target Setting (METS) modelling technique developed at MUARC has been used extensively to estimate the savings in serious casualties (fatalities and seriously injured) for road safety strategies in a number of Australian states and territories. In this application, the New Zealand Transport Authority (NZTA) sought to focus specifically on exploring opportunities for improved road safety outcomes for the nation's road infrastructure investment programs. METS was adapted to investigate several scenarios involving not only reallocating expenditure among existing programs, but also the introduction of three new “Safe System Transformation” programs. These programs, involving a notional amount of up to NZ$100m of investment per annum, targeted serious casualties at urban intersections, rural intersections, and head-on and run-off-road crashes on rural routes. Between 2007 and 2009, these three categories comprised half of all serious casualties on New Zealand roads. New techniques were developed, consistent with Safe System principles, for maximising serious casualty savings at intersections and along routes, using the comprehensive crash data available from the NZTA. Each of the three scenarios was predicted to prevent between 1000 and 1700 additional serious casualties compared with the "business-as-usual" case over a ten-year period. This paper illustrates the application of the optimisation process for serious run-off-road crashes on rural routes.

• Record URL:
  http://acrs.org.au/publications/conference-papers/database/
• Authors:
  • Corben, B
  • Logan, D
  • Healy, D
  • Brodie, C
• Conference:
  • Australasian Road Safety Research Policing Education Conference, 2012, Wellington, New Zealand
• Publication Date: 2012-10

Language

• English

Media Info

• Pagination: 7p
• Monograph Title: Reducing the cost of road safety: Australasian Road Safety Research, Policing and Education Conference 2012, 4-6 October 2012, Wellington, New Zealand

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Financing; Highway design; Highway operations; Investments; Ran off road crashes; Safety; Traffic safety
• Uncontrolled Terms: Road networks; Safe systems (roads)
• Geographic Terms: New Zealand
• ATRI Terms: Crash countermeasure; Road design; Road funding; Road management; Run off the road crash
• ITRD Terms: 1661: Accident prevention; 1653: Run off the road (accid)
• Subject Areas: Highways; Safety and Human Factors; I82: Accidents and Transport Infrastructure;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01481718
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: ARRB
• Files: ITRD, ATRI
• Created Date: May 21 2013 10:43AM