Making Safety Management Knowledge Based

The frequency and severity of accidents depends on the amount of travel by mode, how cars and roads are built, and how people behave. The amount of travel, what mode of travel is used, on what roads travel takes place, what vehicles are in use, and—to some extent— how people behave, is determined by our own political, planning, and design decisions. For such decisions to be rational, we need to be able to foresee the safety consequences of contemplated actions. The ability to anticipate the safety consequences of an action constitutes safety knowledge. The richer the body of safety knowledge, the larger the scope of rational road safety management. The central role of TRB’s Committee on Safety Data, Analysis, and Evaluation is to promote the growth of safety knowledge. This paper examines how safety knowledge and its application in road safety management can be improved in the new millennium. It would be difficult to make the case against knowledge-based safety management. Yet much of current transportation planning, regulation, design, and decision making does not entail explicit (quantitative) consideration of safety consequences—it cannot (yet) be called knowledge based. There are two types of impediments