Sustainable road safety engineering research program: community-based, macro-level collision prediction models

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The enormity of the economic and social burden of injuries due to road collisions has been cited as a global problem of epidemic proportions. Sustainable development is linked with road safety planning because the root cause of the road safety problem lies in a built community form that nurtures over dependence on driving. Traditional road safety engineering has relied on a reactive approach, which works to improve road safety in reaction to identified hazardous road locations. However, only after a collision history exists can a location be identified as hazardous and the road safety problem fixed, often after years of collisions and at high cost in built communities. To reduce the incidence and severity of road collisions below unacceptably high current levels, researchers are pursuing more proactive methods, to explicitly consider road safety at the community planning stage, before problems occur on built roads. However, there is a lack of reliable empirical science-based road safety planning tools to conduct this proactive approach to land use and transportation planning. The development of macro-level collision prediction models has the potential to address this knowledge gap. However, their development process is complex, data intensive, and time consuming, and requires extensive knowledge and use of transportation, geo-spatial, statistical, and regression modelling processes. Research is needed to refine, automate, and facilitate their development and use by practitioners, and thereby increase the effectiveness of the proactive engineering approach to road safety planning and improvement. The Sustainable Road Safety Engineering Research Program will provide science-based research to address this knowledge gap, via the following objectives: 1) Develop macro-level collision prediction models that facilitate sustainable development and road safety planning; 2) Develop automated processes for data extraction and development of these models that facilitate consistency in their quality and use; and, 3) Promote the transfer to and widespread use of these new empirical tools by land use and transportation planners and engineers, to remove the burden imposed by road collisions on society.