Prelims

Traffic Safety Culture

ISBN: 978-1-78714-618-1, eISBN: 978-1-78714-617-4

Publication date: 12 April 2019

Citation

(2019), "Prelims", Ward, N.J., Watson, B. and Fleming-Vogl, K. (Ed.) Traffic Safety Culture, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. i-xvii. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-78714-617-420191001

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2019 Emerald Publishing Limited


Half Title Page

TRAFFIC SAFETY CULTURE

Title Page

TRAFFIC SAFETY CULTURE: DEFINITION, FOUNDATION, AND APPLICATION

EDITED BY

NICHOLAS JOHN WARD

Montana State University, USA

BARRY WATSON

Queensland University of Technology, Australia

KATIE FLEMING-VOGL

MnDOT, Traffic, Safety, & Technology, USA

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

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Emerald Publishing Limited

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First edition 2019

Copyright © 2019 Emerald Publishing Limited

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ISBN: 978-1-78714-618-1 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-78714-617-4 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-78743-249-9 (EPub)

About the Editors

Professor Nicholas John Ward is a Professor of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering and Director of the Center for Health and Safety Culture at Montana State University. This center focuses on transforming culture across the social ecology to influence health and safety behaviors, including safe driving.

Professor Barry Watson is a Global Road Safety Expert at the Centre for Accident Research & Road Safety – Queensland (CARRS-Q), Queensland University of Technology, Australia, and has over 30 years’ road safety experience in government, academic, and civil society organizations. He was CARRS-Q Director (2008–2015) and CEO, Global Road Safety Partnership (2015–2017).

Katie Fleming-Vogl is the State Research Implementation Admin Coordinator for the Minnesota Department of Transportation, a Minnesota Toward Zero Deaths Program Team Member, and Chair of the Minnesota Traffic Safety Culture Action Team. Minnesota’s Toward Zero Death Program adopted Traffic Safety Culture as a key traffic safety strategy, and Traffic Safety Culture is the central focus of the Minnesota Statewide Strategic Highway Safety Plan.

List of Contributors

Dr Eric K. Austin is Associate Professor of Political Science at Montana State University. His research focuses on the social processes of decision-making and problem solving, especially in contentious environments. Dr Austin teaches courses on management, organization theory, and public policy. Prior to completing his PhD at Virginia Tech, Dr Austin worked as a project director in both public and nonprofit organizations.

Christian Brandstätter, Austrian Road Safety Board, is a Psychologist and Researcher with focus on statistics on traffic safety. Main topics are evaluation of measurements and comparative accident analysis for European countries.

Barry Elliott is an Independent Consulting Psychologist involved in the development of evaluation of initiatives, including advertising, to influence road user behavior in Australia and Asia. He specializes in behavior change and was co-author of the OECD Scientific Expert Group “Marketing of Traffic Safety.”

Dr Kari Finley is a Senior Research Scientist for the Center for Health and Safety Culture (CHSC) in the Western Transportation Institute at Montana State University. Dr Finley is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. Her areas of interest include understanding behavior change and measuring culture.

Dr Judy J. Fleiter, Global Road Safety Partnership, Switzerland, and School of Psychology and Counselling, Queensland University of Technology, Australia. Judy has worked, researched, and published extensively in the road user behavior field with a focus on traffic law enforcement and how it can modify behavior across cultural contexts.

Dr Sonja Forward, Senior Research Fellow, Swedish Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI), Sweden, has worked within the field of transportation psychology for the last 25 years. Sonja’s primary areas of research focus on psychological factors predicting and changing unsafe behavior in traffic using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Her work has been published widely, and she frequently presents papers at difference conferences.

Gerald Furian, Austrian Road Safety Board (KFV). Holds master’s degrees in communication, political science, and business administration; research focuses on quantitative empirical research projects in the fields of transport and mobility; involvement in several Austrian and EU research projects such as SARTRE4, TraSaCu, and ESRA.

Kelly N. Green, MPA is a Research Associate II in the Center for Health and Safety Culture at Montana State University, USA. Her research focuses on understanding the role of culture in improving health and safety. She received both her BS in Business Management and MPA at Montana State University.

Susanne Kaiser, Austrian Road Safety Board (KFV). Psychologist at KFV’s research unit, focusing on human factors in road safety. Research fields include traffic safety culture, vehicle automation, visual perception, and workload, as well as emotions. Representing KFV at the research network Humanist VCE. Research visits to Montana (Center for Health and Safety Culture at MSU) and Albania.

Dr Sherrie-Anne Kaye, Research Fellow, Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety – Queensland (CARRS-Q), Queensland University of Technology, Australia. Sherrie has over eight years’ experience working in the area of road safety research, with a focus on young drivers, speeding behavior, and assessing underlying attention and cognitive functions associated with message processing.

Mark King, Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety – Queensland (CARRS-Q), Queensland University of Technology, Australia. Mark has worked in road safety for many years, for government agencies, as a consultant and in academia. He has a particular interest in fostering evidence-based road safety approaches in low- and middle-income countries.

Ioni Lewis is Associate Professor and Principal Research Fellow in the Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety – Queensland (CARRS-Q), Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia. Ioni’s expertise is in the area of road safety advertising design and evaluation. She has published extensively and presented at national and international forums on this topic.

Dr Carlyn Muir is a Senior Research Fellow at Monash University Accident Research Centre, USA. She is an injury prevention researcher with a focus on safety policy and evaluation.

Professor Matthew G. Nagler is a Professor of Business and Economics at the City College of New York and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Dr Nagler is the author of numerous refereed journal articles relating to applied microeconomics, behavioral economics, social economics, and highway safety. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley.

Dr Sharon Newnam, Senior Research Fellow, is an Organizational Psychologist with the Monash University Accident Research Centre and has conducted theoretical and applied research in workplace road safety for the past 12 years.

Jay Otto is a Principal Scientist for the Center for Health and Safety Culture (CHSC) at Montana State University, USA. He leads the research efforts for the Center as well as participates in research projects. His issues of interest include substance abuse prevention, traffic safety, and violence prevention.

Dr Bevan Rowland is a Registered Safety Professional, certified Chartered Generalist OHS Professional, and Chartered Professional Member of the Safety Institute of Australia. Bevan completed his PhD in the area of work-related road safety and has over 12 years academic research experience at CARRS-Q. Bevan is currently employed as a Policy Advisor (Fatigue Management) with the Australian National Heavy Vehicle Regulator.

Dr William J. Schell is Associate Professor in Industrial and Management Systems Engineering and Associate Director of the Montana Engineering Education Research Center at Montana State University, USA, with active research in engineering education and how leadership and culture impact process improvement. He is an elected Fellow of the American Society for Engineering Management.

Christopher Schlembach, University of Vienna, Austria. Researcher and Lecturer at the University of Vienna. Research fields: history of sociology, sociological theory, and qualitative research methods. Until 2016 Scientific Director of the Project “TraSaCu – Traffic Safety Cultures and the Safe Systems Approach.”

David A. Sleet, PhD, is a Senior Consultant on Injury Prevention at the Bizzell Group and an Adjunct Professor of Public Health at Emory University. He is a former Public Health Advisor at NHTSA and an Associate Director for Science at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). He is a charter member of the UN Road Safety Collaboration.

Klaire Somoray is a Research Officer and a PhD Student in the Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety Queensland (CARRS-Q), at Queensland University Technology, Australia. She has been working for CARRS-Q for over four years and had been involved in various projects within the work driving safety domain.

Dr Darren Wishart is a Registered Psychologist and Senior Lecturer at Griffith University. He has almost two decades of research experience in work driving safety, previously working at the Australian Road Research Board (ARRB) and The Centre for Accident research and Road Safety Queensland (CARRS-Q).

Preface

Barry Watson, Nicholas John Ward, and Katie Fleming-Vogl

The Global Traffic Safety Crisis

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that there over 1.25 million people killed every year on the world’s roads, with as many as 50 million other people injured (WHO, 2015). Without action, annual road fatalities are predicted to rise to around 1.9 million by 2030 – becoming the seventh leading cause of death (WHO, 2013). It’s also important to recognize that the impact of road crashes is disproportionate across countries and different road user groups. The WHO (2015) estimates that 90% of the world’s road fatalities occur in low- and middle-income countries, even though these countries only account for 53% of the world’s motor vehicles. Besides the enormous human suffering caused by traffic crashes, they represent a major economic burden. Indeed, the economic losses due to road fatalities and injuries are estimated to represent 3% of GDP globally, and up to 5% of GDP in low- and middle-income countries (WHO, 2015).

In response to this global crisis, the United Nations established the Decade of Action for Road Safety (2011–2020). Besides representing the first truly global response to the issue, it was supported by a Global Plan that specified a road fatality reduction target and established a framework for action around five pillars involving building road safety management capacity; improving the safety of road infrastructure and broader transport networks; further developing the safety of vehicles; enhancing the behavior of road users; and improving post-crash care (UNRSC, undated). Encouragingly, international recognition of the problem was further reinforced in 2016 when the United Nations included traffic safety within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the framework designed to drive global development efforts up to 2030 (UN Sustainable Development Platform, undated). In particular, a specific stand-alone target was included in the SDGs: By 2020, halve the number of global deaths and injuries from road traffic accidents.

The key strategic framework underpinning the Global Plan for the Decade of Action for Road Safety is the Safe System Approach (Watson, 2016). This framework is increasingly being recognized as the leading strategic perspective in road safety, underpinning the road safety strategies of many of the best-performing countries. Central to the Safe Systems Approach is the recognition of the vulnerability of humans to injury and that they inevitably make mistakes. As a consequence, the road transport system needs to be transformed to better account for human limitations and to reduce the impact of human error. At a practical level, this requires a holistic and comprehensive approach involving improvements to vehicle safety for occupants and pedestrians, improvements to road environment safety through assessing and treating poor roads, encouraging widespread compliance with road rules and other safe behaviors, and optimizing interactions between vehicles and road users, particularly through the management of vehicle speeds. Importantly, the Safe System Approach is increasingly being recognized as the means by which countries and communities can achieve the long-term vision of zero fatalities and serious injuries on the roads.

The Need to Consider the Role of Culture in Traffic Safety

Traditional approaches to traffic safety have tended to focus on teaching safe behavior (education), punishing risky behavior (enforcement), or designing the environment to minimize crashes and/or the injuries resulting from them (engineering). However, over recent years there has been a growing awareness of the need to understand how the prevailing culture in a country influences both behavior on the roads and the way governments and the community respond to the traffic safety problem. In this respect, it can be argued that the Safe System Approach still tends to focus our traffic safety efforts too narrowly on roads, vehicles, and road users. Indeed, some researchers have argued that it needs to be strengthened by integrating it with contemporary developments in systems theory to provide a better account of the complex nature of the road transport system and the interactions involved (Salmon & Lenne, 2015). Moreover, Johnson (2014, p. 1175) has argued that:

[…] that critical elements of the safe system model are in discord with behavioural mores in the cultures of many western motorised nations and that this hampers the adoption of the most effective safety programs within key institutions and within political systems.

He argued that a systematic examination of car use and safety cultures is required to strengthen contemporary safe system thinking.

Therefore, the opportunity exists to augment both traditional and safe system approaches to traffic safety by incorporating a stronger focus on the role of culture. From a practical perspective, it offers a means of both better understanding the complex range of factors influencing behavior on the roads and of identifying innovative strategies to bring about change at the personal, community, and institutional level.

Toward a Traffic Safety Culture Paradigm

Over recent years, efforts to better understand the role of culture in traffic safety have coalesced under the umbrella term of Traffic Safety Culture (TSC). While this concept appears to have received the most attention in the United States, it is attracting growing international attention. However, the research and policy development falling under this umbrella remains relatively diffuse. It is a relatively new area and has not yet developed a robust theoretical foundation or amassed a large body of research. Moreover, those traffic safety strategies that have applied culture-based approaches have seldom included comprehensive evaluations to validate effectiveness.

In this context, the purpose of this reference book is to provide traffic safety researchers and practitioners with an international and multidisciplinary compendium of theoretical and methodological concepts relevant to the research and application of TSC as an important step toward establishing it as a new paradigm in the field. The aim is to promote great understanding of the definitions, theoretical perspectives, research methods, and applied tools underpinning the approach.

Structure of the Book

Consistent with the above aims, the book is divided into three sections addressing:

  • (1)

    key issues involved in conceptualizing, defining, measuring, and analyzing TSC;

  • (2)

    foundational concepts for understanding and harnessing the role of TSC as an important part of the traffic safety system; and

  • (3)

    examples of strategies, methods, and tools for applying TSC to bring about traffic safety improvements.

The information presented is intended to provide practitioners with a common language and shared vision for the role of traffic safety culture to achieve a safe traffic system devoid of fatalities and serious injuries. For the academic, this information is expected to provide a theoretical framework and methodology that can support continued research to understand the various concepts underlying traffic safety culture and its use as a method to improve traffic safety. Together, we hope this book will provide readers with new insights into the way that culture can be conceptualized as both a determinant of traffic safety and engine for change.

Acknowledgments

Although safety culture is not a new concept, traffic safety culture is an emerging topic in the traffic safety field. The editorial team would like to recognize traffic safety practitioners and traffic safety organizations who have invested effort and resources toward traffic safety culture research and strategies. Their leadership in traffic safety, dedication to safe roads, and innovative approaches have moved traffic safety culture forward from theory into practice. Such investments will continue to expand the body of knowledge for traffic safety culture and further improve roadway safety for all.

References

Johnston (2014) Johnston, I. R. (2014). Beyond “best practice” road safety thinking and systems management – A case for culture change research. Safety Science, 48, 11751181.

Salmon & Lenne (2015) Salmon, P. M. , & Lenne, M. G. (2015). Editorial: Miles away or just around the corner: systems thinking in road safety research and practice. Accident Analysis and Prevention, 74, 243249.

UN Sustainable Development Platform UN Sustainable Development Platform . (undated). Downloaded on 22 March 2016: Retrieved from https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/7891TRANSFORMING%20OUR%20WORLD.pdf. New York, NY: United Nations, 2015.

UNRSC UNRSC . (undated). Global Plan for the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011–2020. United Nations Road Safety Collaboration. Geneva: World Health Organization (WHO).

Watson (2016) Watson, B. (2016). The role of GRSP in global road safety and priorities for achieving ambitious road fatality reduction targets. Journal of the Australasian College of Road Safety, 27 (2), 5155.

WHO (2013) WHO . (2013). Global Status Report on Road Safety. Geneva: World Health Organization (WHO).

WHO (2015) WHO . (2015). Global Status Report on Road Safety. Geneva: World Health Organization (WHO).