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1 Introduction
Pages 9-26

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From page 9... ... Officials responsible for traffic safety in the countries with relatively good safety performance attribute this progress primarily to government traffic safety programs, including improvements in traffic control and road design, vehicle safety regulations, and willingness to enact and enforce stringent driver regulations regarding speed, alcohol and drug use, seat belt use, and restrictions according to driver age. The gap between traffic safety progress in the United States and the other high-income countries deserves the attention of U.S. Read the entire page →
From page 10... ... Working Groups on Speed Management (OECD and ECMT 2006a) and on Achieving Ambitious Road Safety Targets (OECD and International Transport Forum n.d.; OECD and International Transport Forum 2008) Read the entire page →
From page 11... ... Among the obstacles are the following: • Decentralization: in most of the benchmark countries, regulation and enforcement are highly centralized, often the responsibility of a single national authority, whereas in the United States, 50 states and thousands of local jurisdictions are responsible for traffic safety and the operation of the highway system; • Public attitudes that oppose measures common elsewhere: for example, in the United States, motorcycle helmet laws and speed enforcement using automated cameras often encounter active public opposition; • Weak support for or opposition to rigorous enforcement in legislatures and among the judiciary, a reflection of these same public attitudes; • The constitutional prohibition of unreasonable searches, which prevents U.S. police from conducting the frequent and routine driver sobriety testing without probable cause that is common practice in some other countries; and • Resource limitations that prevent enforcement of the intensity common in other countries. Read the entire page →
From page 12... ... If Country A were predominantly urban and Country B rural, B could have lower fatality rates than A on both urban and rural roads and yet still have a higher total rate than A The convergence of national fatality rates to similar values in recent years (in the range of 0.6 to 1.0 fatality per 100 million vehicle kilometers) Read the entire page →
From page 13... ... (Sources: OECD n.d.; OECD and International Transport Forum 2009; OECD and International Transport Forum 2010; NHTSA 2010.) Read the entire page →
From page 14... ... NATIONAL STRATEGIES Several of the countries that have achieved lower fatality rates and faster safety improvement than the United States also have undertaken rigorous, sustained, and carefully planned safety initiatives that are internationally recognized as innovative. Features of programs in four countries are given below as examples. Read the entire page →
From page 15... ... The speed control program aims to reduce average speeds throughout much of the road network, and many speed limits have been reduced since the 1990s. In 1997, the Swedish Parliament established the Vision Zero policy to guide Swedish safety programs. Read the entire page →
From page 16... ... and international safety efforts have noted differences among jurisdictions in safety program management practices. For example, the members of one of FHWA's scanning teams that observed safety programs abroad were struck by the results of greater application of measurement and evaluation as management tools in other countries (MacDonald et al. Read the entire page →
From page 17... ... safety programs from the Victoria, Australia, program (written by one of the designers of the Australian program) , similarly ranks management practices higher than any specific countermeasure among the critical factors accounting for Victoria's relative success in reducing fatalities (Johnston 2006, 16) Read the entire page →
From page 18... ... Indeed, reducing speeding can reduce rapidly the number of fatalities and injuries and is a guaranteed way to make real progress towards the ambitious road safety targets set by OECD/ECMT countries. Similarly, a review of the history of road safety policy in France, written by a participant in the development of the policies, emphasized the power of behavior modification. Read the entire page →
From page 19... ... Indeed, as Chapters 2 and 3 will describe, all strong statements about the causes of differences in safety trends among the high-income countries must be examined skeptically because data limitations seriously hamper historical research and because, even in the countries with the most advanced management systems, safety program evaluations often are lacking or are inconclusive. These arguments also are not fully consistent with the philosophies of the safety programs in the benchmark nations with the best safety records, all of which incorporate safe vehicle design and safe infrastructure design in their comprehensive strategies. Read the entire page →
From page 20... ... . IIHS cites federal research funding as an indicator of the low priority that the public assigns to highway safety, noting that the National Institutes of Health's 2001 budget for dental research was five times the research budget of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Read the entire page →
From page 21... ... A Belgian study examining why that country had one of the highest traffic fatality rates in Europe in 2000 found that the European countries have similar laws but nonetheless divergent results and noted a correlation between country fatality rates and an index of perceptions of the degree of corruption in public life. It concluded that "countries . Read the entire page →
From page 22... ... The committee did not interpret the study charge reference to altering driver behavior as ruling out investigation of the role of other categories of intervention in explaining international differences. The committee's examination of specific interventions in Chapters 3 and 4 covers occupant restraints, motorcycle helmets, and infrastructure improvements as well as antispeeding and anti–drunk driving campaigns (as case studies of methods rather than a comprehensive survey of interventions) Read the entire page →
From page 23... ... The recommendations, addressed to elected officials and to government safety professionals and administrators, identify actions needed in the United States to emulate the successes that other countries have achieved. REFERENCES Abbreviations CISR Comité Interministériel de la Sécurité Routière ECMT European Conference of Ministers of Transport FHWA Federal Highway Administration IIHS Insurance Institute for Highway Safety NHTSA National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Read the entire page →
From page 24... ... 2010. Press Release: A Record Decade for Road Safety: International Transport Forum at the OECD Publishes Road Death Figures for 33 Countries. Read the entire page →
From page 25... ... 2006. Special Report 287: Improving Road Safety in Developing Countries: Opportunities for U.S. Read the entire page →

From page 9...

... Officials responsible for traffic safety in the countries with relatively good safety performance attribute this progress primarily to government traffic safety programs, including improvements in traffic control and road design, vehicle safety regulations, and willingness to enact and enforce stringent driver regulations regarding speed, alcohol and drug use, seat belt use, and restrictions according to driver age. The gap between traffic safety progress in the United States and the other high-income countries deserves the attention of U.S.

1 Introduction Pages 9-26

1 Introduction
Pages 9-26