If road safety is the answer, what is the question?

Abstract

The reasonable road user has a right to a reasonably safe transport environment. Human behaviour is the basic building block of user activities, and the transport community should understand this. The modern paradigm is the Safe System with its five pillars: Road safety management, safer road users, safer roads and mobility (safer speeds), safer vehicles and effective post-crash response. Because we are engineers, we concentrate on safer roads. If one compares the fatality rate of many European countries and the standards adopted in their roads, to those in South Africa (approximately 10 times worse) one needs to ask the question, are safer roads working? An overview of the RTMC actions indicates that we are starting to achieve success towards the five pillars. The big issue is the human actions, specifically pedestrian behaviour, which is responsible for 44% of fatalities. The group that is most vulnerable is males 25 to 45 years of age. How do we make them safer?