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Cutting speed for the good of the planet?
CLIMATE change looks set to influence the way Australia promotes road safety. The new safety strategy drawn up by the Australian Transport Council recommends that as part of the initiatives to further crack down on speeding, research be conducted to decide how best to promote the idea that lower speeds not only save lives but also reduce greenhouse gas. (Once it used to be argued that a steady speed of 110 km/hr burned less fuel.)
Such a holistic approach to road safety is also reflected in the council’s recommendations for more involvement by urban planners, environmental organizations, and health professionals. (See too: “Why doctors want a say in city design”.)
“Links with the health and environment sectors need to be established or strengthened,” the council says. “The benefits of reduced road trauma to the health system, by way of reduced demand for hospital bed-days and emergency and intensive care resources, need to be highlighted to generate greater support of the health sector.”
The council’s two-year strategy calls for action across four broad areas: safer speed, safer roads and roadsides, safer vehicles and safer behaviour. On cutting speed it wants to see a national “best practice” speed management strategy developed and the implementation of best practice speed enforcement technologies including point-to-point automatic speed detection, and automated speed enforcement technologies.
The scan also showed:
Bike crashes
The world’s economic problems are creating good and bad news for road safety. While many countries say the economic slow down is reducing traffic and consequently the number of road crashes, one of Britain’s top insurers has identified a more adverse trend. Car insurer, Liverpool Victoria Friendly Society, says so many Britons are switching to bicycles to cut travel costs that there has been a 29% increase in deaths and injuries involving cyclists in the six months to December. The company estimates one in 20 Britons switched to cycling in 2008 - and most of them had no training. In fact the company surveyed a cross section and found 52% had not even read the Highway Code’s advice to cyclists. A quarter could not identify a “cyclists prohibited” sign and 42% were riding without helmets. The company blames such inexperience for the 150,000 crashes admitted by cyclists in the July-December period so it is now pressing the government to introduce compulsory training.
Jamming mobiles
The November issue of TransScan reported UK research quoting that up to 48% of the country’s 18 to 24-year-olds admitted to texting while driving. Now electronic engineers at the University of Utah may have come up with a solution. They have developed a new type of car key that prevents a mobile phone operating while the car is being driven. The key is linked to the driver’s mobile via wireless and effectively blocks the phone while the car is moving. But the device does make exceptions. It will allow calls to police and emergency services, and will let the teenager “phone home” or to any other pre-listed number approved by the parents. The researchers estimate that at any one time 10% of America’s teenaged motorists are either talking on their mobiles or texting while they drive. The device will be marketed under the name, “Key2SafeDriving”, and will cost less than $US 50 when it goes on sale mid-year.
Identity check
It is the same over most of the western world: young drivers, elderly drivers and motorcyclists are involved in the majority of road crashes. But does that fact “stigmatise” all those young and old motorists and motorbike riders who drive safely and never have a crash? Associate Professor Ove Njå of Norway’s University of Stavanger thinks it does - especially after his research for the Norwegian Public Roads Administration to discover precisely which group of road users pose the greatest risk. He reviewed all 625 fatal crashes that occurred on Norway’s roads between 2005 and 2007, conducted interviews and searched out patterns that said more about the causes. The result was that he identified no less than 17 sub-groups involved in crashes. Among the young people there were six distinct sub-groups all quite different from each other yet all at risk of a deadly crash. For example, there was a sub-group of “young weekend-driving males”. According to Prof Njå, this group all enjoyed games and “extreme behaviour in traffic”. They are not particularly interested in cars, nor did they drink while driving yet typically they had crashes on their way to and from parties. They are entirely different from another young sub-group, he calls the “Indifferent”. The Indifferent disregarded the norms, their behaviour in traffic was “extreme”, and they drove while under the influence, without a licence and often associated with criminals. Prof Njå suggests that if police were able to identify members of the sub-groups then when such drivers were involved in minor incidents, appropriate interventions could be used before they killed themselves.
No more traffic lights?
After six months living without town-centre traffic lights, the little German town of Bohmte in Lower Saxony (pop: 7500) is reporting a marked reduction in crashes, noticeably calmer traffic, and no complaints from its citizens. “Every Euro spent on this was a Euro well spent,” says town councillor, Sabine de Buhr-Drawbar. In fact much to the surprise of many observers, turning Bohmte into the European Union’s first experimental town for the so-called “Shared Space” project, appears to have worked remarkably well. Even truck drivers, who used to be the butt of many a complaint, are now said to be driving through the town slowly and with curtesy. A report carried in Siemens’ ITS Magazine says that apart from a 50km/h speed limit on the town’s main through road, there are no other rules. Road signs have been taken down, pavements and curbs removed, and there are no road markings to divide the available space between pedestrians, motorists, truck drivers and cyclists. Each is left to find their way through the “shared space” responsibly. The concept is the brainchild of the late Dutch traffic planner, Hans Monderman who believed that “danger breeds safety”. In other words, if there are a host of laws, regulations, signs and traffic lights, people wrongly believe they are “safe”. The European Union is helping to fund the shared space concept and six other European municipalities in the Netherlands, the UK, Denmark and Belgium, are now preparing to throw out their traffic lights too. Meanwhile Bohnte plans to get rid of more this year.
