Intrinsic road safety: A new approach?

In 1991 the Dutch Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management concluded that its policy regarding road-safety should be sharpened in order that its goal set for road-safety in the year 2010 would be achieved (i.e. 50% reduction of dead and 40% reduction of wounded persons in comparison with 1986). This new policy is being called “Intrinsic Safety”. The important elements of this course of action are: • - A greater degree of control of structural developments. • - Increased action to prevent accidents rather than that which reduces the severity of the consequences of accidents. • - Greater attention for an integral approach of traffic safety, through influencing all kinds of decision makers outside the realm of traffic safety. • - Not viewing and treating the human aspects, the roads and the vehicles in isolation, but primarily focusing attention on the interaction between these components. At the moment the Ministry has inaugurated some actions which will be a more specific elaboration of “Intrinsic Safety”. In this paper we will try to analyze whether this new policy is a totally new concept rather than an intensification of the old course of action. Furthermore we will discuss a few problems which may occur when the “Intrinsic Safety” approach will be elaborated in the near future. For example: • - How do we make sure that chosen measures (e.g. decisions concerning the infrastructure) will be the most effectual ones in relation with safety? • - Is the organisation at this moment sufficiently fit to work on an “intrinsically safe traffic system” or is it inappropriate? (e.g., presently there is an increasing tendency of decisions being made by regional departments rather than by central government) • - Are we in the possession of sufficient knowledge concerning the interactions between the several goals of traffic policy so that actions taken in relation with one goal (e.g. reducing air pollution) will not have a negative effect on traffic safety?