Road safety

From ArticleWorld

Road safety is a field of study that attempts to reduce the number of accidents as well as the consequences of those accidents. This is done by formulating and implementing, traffic management systems that encompass a number of interrelated activities, in various different fields.

History

Crashes have been around as long as vehicles have, so it would seem. The first recorded crash was in 1771 when Joseph Cugnot crashed his Fardier, a steam powered vehicle, into a wall in France. Bridget Driscoll is the first recorded automobile fatality, this occurred in London on August 17, 1896. In the beginning road safety was merely very simple models based on driver behaviors. Many of our earliest road safety innovations were developed by William Phelps Eno, who is often referred to as the father of traffic safety. Eno developed the stop sign, the one way street, the traffic circle or roundabout, and many other traffic controls that we take for granted today. Engineering, Education and Enforcement (the three E’s) were all efforts to combat human error, which has been the prime factor in auto accidents since the beginning.

Problems

Fatalities and Killed or Seriously Injured (KSI) rates are the standard measures applied when assessing road safety measures. These rates are typically applied per billion passenger kilometers traveled. Speed has always been a key ingredient in traffic fatalities and injuries. In pedestrian related accidents the speed of the automobile is usually the determining factor, 85% of accidents involving pedestrians ends in fatality if the vehicle is traveling at least 40 miles per hour. In residential areas many local governments are using traffic calming devices such as speed humps to reduce the possibility of injury and death. On the other end of the scale, freeways (or motorways), provide for better safety engineering because they apply same direction travel, with limited access.