ASSESSING RISK AND SETTING TARGETS IN TRANSPORT SAFETY PROGRAMMES

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The purpose of this review is to identify best practice in risk assessment and target setting in transport safety and the scope for their wider application and further useful development, and to make recommendations, having regard to experience in Member States, developments at the EU level, and the prospect of enlargement. Road transport is treated at greatest length because about 97% of deaths in transport in the EU occur on roads and target setting is used widely in road safety policy. In rail, air and maritime transport, rather similar needs and opportunities for addressing the issues at the EU level are identified.

In the year 2000, about 40 800 people were killed on roads in the EU and about a further 11 600 in the Accession Countries. Deaths per million person-years ranged from about 60 in some countries to over 200 in others, and were about 110 for the EU as a whole. There is abundant evidence that many of these deaths can be prevented by already available and cost-effective means. Achieving this requires a strategic approach which all stakeholders are actively involved in developing.

Assessment of risk contributes to effective strategies for casualty reduction, by helping to show where scope for applying different safety measures lies. Setting challenging yet achievable numerical targets can strengthen motivation to contribute to casualty reduction, and this can be maintained by regular and transparent monitoring of progress towards the targets.

Complacency about death and injury on the roads can be shaken and sights raised by adopting a vision or philosophy for road safety. A vision or philosophy providing a long-term goal and a succession of shorter-term targets directed towards its realisation can have complementary effects in motivating the initial development and subsequent implementation of road safety strategies.

The sadly large annual numbers of road users killed or injured make it possible to estimate risk to road users reliably and numerically by relating recorded numbers of casualties to measures of exposure to risk. Road safety targets in EU Member States differ widely as to performance indicator, timescale and degree of challenge. Many countries and the EU itself have set targets to reduce the number of deaths and some to reduce the number injured. Target periods are typically about 10 years. It is important to use a sound statistically based methodology to set the targets.

When targets have been set and the strategy for achieving them has been developed, then the targets and strategy need to be formally adopted to declare a public commitment to them by the responsible politicians, preferably of all parties. Monitoring and evaluation should take place throughout the target period in order to benefit from experience and adapt to changing circumstances, as well as to track progress towards the targets.

Quantitative road safety targets have been adopted by the EU, a number of EU Member States and Poland. Most aim to reduce the annual number of deaths by 40 to 50% within typically about 10 years. They represent an ambition to reduce the number of deaths more quickly than continuation of past trends would imply.

Risk assessment in controlled engineering systems such as rail, air, and maritime transport is more highly developed than in road transport. This reflects both the more comprehensively managed nature of these systems and the relative rarity of accidents in them. In relation to safety targets for them, the small numbers of relevant accidents, and of deaths and serious injuries in most of them can make it difficult to know whether a specific target has actually been reached.

Numbers of deaths on railways in the EU in 1996-2000 averaged about 120 per year to passengers, 40 per year to staff and about 700 per year to third parties, excluding suicides. These figures indicate the scale of risk, but they suffer from the weakness that there is no international agreement on what constitutes a railway casualty. Nor are there standard ways of measuring exposure to risk on the railways. There are three general methods for estimating risk, which are often used in combination in rail transport. Only a minority of Member States have quantified targets for rail safety.

The annual number of deaths in the EU on scheduled and charter flights operated by commercial airlines is estimated to average about 140 for flights within the EU and 50 for flights to or from the EU. The rarity of fatal accidents and the international character of air transport make risk assessment and target setting largely a matter to be addressed for the EU as a whole by the European Air Safety Agency. Risk assessment has been applied to air transport widely on an ad hoc basis and systematically to two important aspects, but these account for only a small proportion of accidents.

The annual number of deaths in maritime transport in EU waters has previously been estimated by ETSC to average about 140, with about another 40 in inland waterway transport in the EU. Risk assessment is used in maritime transport, partly under the influence of the off-shore industry, and partly in relation to exemptions from provisions of international instruments. The rarity of multi-fatality accidents and the international character of maritime transport make target setting in terms of resulting death or injury largely a matter to be addressed for the EU as a whole by the European Maritime Safety Agency. There are related issues of loss of vessels and environmental damage resulting from maritime accidents. Corresponding attention is needed to inland waterway transport.

The review leads to the following recommendations:

1. The EU should embark urgently and vigorously upon a timetabled and fully funded programme to achieve consistency across Member States in recording road traffic collisions involving personal injury, estimating the level and pattern of underrecording of collisions, and estimating the amount of use of the roads, together with the assembly of resulting data from all Member States in a common database accessible to all at marginal cost of access.

2. The EU and each Member State, and with their help each Accession Country, should continually and robustly challenge society’s complacency about the level of risk in using the roads by adopting or further developing road safety strategies which evoke and channel coherent and effective action by all those stakeholders within and outside government who can contribute to reducing death and injury on the roads.

3. The EU and Member States and Accession Countries should focus their road safety strategies by setting numerical targets for casualty reduction over the period covered by the strategy which are challenging enough to motivate the stakeholders to strenuous effort, yet achievable through the policies and measures envisaged in the strategies.

4. Experience of different aspects of the target-setting process, especially the forecasting of casualty rates and of the effectiveness of safety measures, should be shared among the EU, the Member States and the Accession Countries.

5. The EU should identify the route to achievement of its target, the respective roles of the EU and its Member States in doing so, and how the EU can help the Member States to deliver their respective contributions.

6. Railway safety data for the EU member states should be assembled comprehensively and to common international definitions, as envisaged in the proposed Railway Safety Directive, together with common measures of exposure to risk, and this should be a high priority for the proposed European Railway Agency.

7. It should be an early task for the European Railway Agency to investigate appropriate forms of target for numbers of train accidents and casualties in them across the EU and ways of judging progress towards such targets, having regard to the small numbers of accidents and variability in the numbers of casualties in them.

8. It should also be an early task for the European Railway Agency to progress the further development of common methods of risk assessment and criteria for safety measures that is envisaged in the draft Railway Safety Directive.

9. Railway operators’ safety assessment documents, including their risk assessments, should be public.

10. It should be an early task for the proposed European Air Safety Agency to assemble a database for uniformly reported incident and exposure data concerning intra-European and intercontinental scheduled and charter flights in European airspace by both EU registered and other operators, and to investigate appropriate forms of target for the corresponding numbers of air accidents and casualties in them across the EU and ways of judging progress towards such targets.

11. The European Air Safety Agency should then develop counterpart reporting systems, database, targets and monitoring of progress for general aviation in European airspace.

12. It should be an early task for the proposed European Maritime Safety Agency to assemble a database for uniformly reported incident and exposure data concerning both EU registered and other vessels above a certain tonnage in European waters, and to investigate appropriate forms of target for the corresponding numbers of accidents and casualties in them across the EU and ways of judging progress towards such targets.

13. The European Maritime Safety Agency should then develop a counterpart database and counterpart targets and monitoring of progress for loss of vessels and environmental damage from incidents involving vessels in European waters.

14. The EU should establish counterpart databases, targets and monitoring of progress for inland waterway transport throughout the EU.

Acknowledgements

ETSC gratefully acknowledges the contributions of members of ETSC's Risk Assessment and Target Setting Working Party to this review:

Working Party Members
Prof. Richard Allsop (Chairman)
Prof. Werner Brilon
Dr. Jeremy Broughton
Dr. Rune Elvik
Prof. Andrew Evans
Mr. Soren Underlien Jensen
Mr. Veli-Pekka Kallberg
Mr. Matthijs Koornstra
Mr. Klaus Machata
Ms Nicole Muhlrad
Mr. Michel Piers
Mr. Sven-Erik Sigfridsson
Prof. Maurizio Tira
Prof. George Yannis
Mr. Jörgen Zachau

ETSC Working Party Secretary: Mr. Antonio Avenoso

ETSC is grateful for the financial support provided by Directorate of Energy and Transport of the European Commission and the Finnish Ministry of Transport and Communications. ETSC also acknowledges the contribution towards the printing and dissemination costs of this review provided by BP, Ford of Europe, KeyMed, Rail Safety and Railtrack Group plc, Scania, and Shell International. The contents of this review are the sole responsibility of ETSC and do not necessarily reflect the view of sponsors nor organisations to which research staff participating in the Working Party belong.ETSC also acknowledges the contribution towards the printing and dissemination costs of this review provided by Bombardier Transportation, BP, KeyMed, Railway Safety, Railtrack Group plc, Scania, and Shell International. The contents of this review are the sole responsibility of ETSC and do not necessarily reflect the view of sponsors nor organisations to which research staff participating in the Working Party belong.