Conclusions and Future Directions

Abstract

Purpose – This chapter highlights main thrusts discussed in the book in its entirety.

Methodology – This chapter reviews the content of the book, drawing together the challenges safety analysts and other important road safety stakeholders confront while trying to understand and reduce transport system risks.

Findings – The chapter describes the challenges the profession is confronting. These challenges include the difficulty in analysing crashes and drawing reliable conclusions when crashes are rare, the complexities involved with piecing together and identifying actual causes of crashes, how driver behaviour is a dominant influence on crash risk, how a diverse mix of road users is challenging to manage, that estimating the safety benefits of treatments is fraught with complexity, how surrogate measures of safety – despite the analytical research needed on their linkages with crashes – can be used for proactively improving design and operational decisions, and how real-time data collected on monitored highways, which need the development of solid theoretical underpinnings moving forward – can be used reliably for estimating crash risks and manage safety. The chapter briefly summarises how these challenges may be addressed moving forward.

The chapter also identifies future research opportunities that can be pursued to further improve safe mobility. These opportunities include the use of alternate methodologies for ‘measuring safety’ such as advanced vision recognition techniques, the use of surrogate measures of safety such as time to collision, driverless and connected vehicles, naturalistic driving experiments and data, the reshaping of urban cities, and the rapid growth and motorisation of developing countries.

Practical implications – By fostering a better understanding of the challenges the profession is facing, and prompting a dialogue on how they can be overcome, will lead to a reduction in the number and severity of crashes of global transport networks, making them more sustainable. The chapter shows how some of these challenges can be tackled.

Originality/value of chapter – This chapter draws from all the chapters of this book that describes various challenges road safety professionals currently face, and directs readers to different parts of the book for more in-depth treatment on how these challenges can be met. The chapter also describes research opportunities where further safety gains can be obtained moving forward.

Citation

Lord, D. and Washington, S. (2018), "Conclusions and Future Directions", Lord, D. and Washington, S. (Ed.) Safe Mobility: Challenges, Methodology and Solutions (Transport and Sustainability, Vol. 11), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 451-458. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2044-994120180000011023