Investigating Road Safety Management Systems in the European Countries: Patterns and Particularities

Abstract

A road safety management (RSM) system can be defined as “a complex institutional structure that involves cooperating and interacting bodies which support the tasks and processes necessary for the prevention and reduction of road traffic injuries”. RSM should promote the road safety progress of the country. However, the details of this relationship are generally lacking. This study explored the RSM systems in European countries based on the information collected through interviews with experts and officials, in each country, and using a “good practice” criteria questionnaire. The dataset included 14 countries with fifty items related to five RSM areas: institutional organization; policy formulation and adoption; policy implementation and funding; monitoring and evaluation; scientific support, information and capacity building. Cluster analyses and correlations were used to identify country groups with similar RSM components, to recognize typical RSM structures if available and to examine the relationship between RSM and road safety performance of the countries. The findings showed that all the countries are different when RSM systems are considered as a whole, making it impossible to identify typical RSM structures or a single best working model at a national level. However, it is possible to compare countries when the RSM areas are considered separately, where the clusters of countries recognized by the study present the patterns common for those European countries. Across the analyses, a number of countries with a consistently higher and lower availability of the RSM components were identified, enabling a final countries’ ranking into a number of groups. The latter actually reflects the level of RSM in the country, in terms of its correspondence to the “good practice” criteria. A further analysis indicated a positive correlation between the higher level of the RSM system and better safety performance of the countries.