Organisation: Department for Transport
Date uploaded: 28th September 2011
Date published/launched: Pre 2009
This project aimed to identify the most effective, low-cost speed-reducing measures for a selection of urban and rural environments.
The overall approach consisted of three sequential steps:
Stage 1 – a review of previous experience with speed-reduction treatments;
Stage 2 – applying expert judgement to the information gathered in Stage 1 to design a range of treatments for each of the problem areas and road types;
Stage 3 – simulator experiments to identify the most promising treatments.
The review guided the experimental work in Stage 2 of the project by considering
the relationship between speed indices and accident rates at both the individual
driver level and the collective (road) level.
In addition, the review outlined the stateof-the-art speed-reducing measures, concentrating on engineering design. This involved consultation of the current research literature, analysis of existing data and a survey of local authorities in the UK.
One of the main conclusions was that the methods that local authorities use to evaluate and report the success of interventions should be standardised and the results made easily accessible by other authorities.
For more information contact:
Department of Transport Research Team