Road Safety

There has been a considerable growth in interest in Community Road Safety in recent years, both on the part of central authorities which have an interest in reducing the road toll and on the part of local communities and their governments. This project report documents current experience, explores objectives, evaluations and priorities, considers trends and opportunities and makes recommendations for future directions for such programs. Current experience is documented through a literature review and an overview of programs running at time of writing in Australia and New Zealand. The overview of programs is based on visits to most jurisdictions, and is presented as an Appendix to the report. Objectives for community road safety have been identified, including creating an informed community, mobilising resources to road safety ends, promoting effective action and integrating activities. It is recognised that particular conditions must exist at both the central and local levels for programs to be sustainable over the long term. Evaluation is a particularly difficult for programs pitched at the local level since there are generally insufficient crashes in any one area to demonstrate that programs have been effective in reducing crashes. Different emphasis on process evaluation and outcome evaluation according to the size of the project and whether evaluation is being carried out locally or centrally is suggested. Key opportunities of programs include more comprehensive adoption of strategic plans for communities, more cooperative working among communities, greater involvement of local government in some jurisdictions, better handling of media issues, better targeting of problems and new programs to deal with these issues, improved evaluation and feedback, and better opportunities for communication among communities. Issues relating to future directions are discussed under headings dealing with the scope and role of community road safety programs, the lin