Road Safety Strategy Beyond 2010

This report follows on from a presentation given to DfT delegates at a meeting on 8 November 2007. It brings together and expands on inputs from those presenting papers at that meeting. The work reported on draws together research across some of the core disciplines related to road safety. It does not report on any new research.

The context for setting road safety policy encompasses many fields and considerations. To address these fully is beyond the scope of this report.

Some of the key considerations – population, traffic, non-road modes and technology – are raised. For example, different population groups (with different road risk, choosing different vehicles and with different resilience to collisions) are growing at different rates. This can be expected to exhibit some control over accident numbers and severities going forward.

These differences suggest that changes to test procedures may be required to ensure that vehicles are designed appropriately for users going beyond medium-sized adults.

The Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) reports The Numerical Context for Setting National Casualty Reduction Targets (TRL Report No. 382, see Broughton et al., 2000) presents the details of the method used to aid development of the road safety casualty reduction targets set for 2010.

This report reviews the progress towards those targets and considers improvements to the method used.