Road Safety

We Think Everyone Else Is Okay With Speeding. That's Part of the Problem

Speeding is a road safety problem almost everywhere. This research examined safety attitudes to speeding across 39 countries.

Key Takeaways

• Across all contexts, males reported higher levels of speeding than females in each region.
• Age gradients were evident for most contexts, with higher speeding prevalence typically reported in younger groups. In contrast, in the Americas, mid-to-older age groups reported relatively high speeding outside built-up areas and on motorways/freeways.
• Acceptability of speeding was generally low across all regions and contexts, but clear differences emerged between perceived social acceptability (what others would find acceptable) and personal acceptability, suggesting that speeding is perceived as more acceptable to others than to oneself.
• Support for speed management measures was substantial (but not necessarily a majority) across regions and was generally higher among females than males.
• Personal acceptability was associated with markedly higher odds of reporting speeding.
• For speeding outside built-up areas, both personal acceptability and perceived social acceptability were significant, indicating that both personal approval and perceived norms contribute to reported speeding in this context.
• Agreement with the statement “I have to drive fast; otherwise, I have the impression of losing time” increased the odds of speeding.
• Stronger confidence in driving substantially above the limit was associated with higher odds of speeding and lower intention to comply.
• Perceiving speeding as a frequent cause of crashes was associated with higher intention to respect speed limits.
• Interventions that target acceptability and perceived norms may complement structural and enforcement-based measures in contexts where speeding is socially normalized.

Comment

One vision for AVs is that at some point they will become so much safer than human drivers that we will no longer allow humans to drive.

We are a long way from that, and I doubt it will ever happen. However, AVs driving at the speed limits on busy roads could force human-driven vehicles behind them to comply as well, making human drivers safer.

What Next?

Do you have strategies to reduce the normalisation of speeding?

Road Safety

NYC's Vision Zero Reboot: Bold on Actions, More Needed on Outcomes

New York City has released a new Vision Zero action plan. How does it stack up?

Key Takeaways

• New York has had a Vision Zero strategy since 2014. 633 fewer lives have been lost in the Vision Zero years than would have been expected if pre-Vision Zero trends had continued (2005-2014 versus 2015-2024).

Eight strategic goals:

1. Remove dangerous drivers from our streets.
2. Promote safe, certified micromobility while curbing dangerous devices and riding behavior.
3. Encourage safer travel through walking, transit, micromobility, and car-share over private automobile use.
4. Discourage oversized vehicles and prepare for new vehicle technologies.
5. Expand and maintain safety-focused street designs.
6. Cultivate a safety culture through education, enforcement, and shared responsibility.
7. Leverage emerging data, technology, and analysis for smarter interventions.
8. Lead by example with the safest municipal fleet in the nation.

Marquee Action Items:

• The plan includes more than 100 actions.
• Launch New York City’s First-Ever Super Speeder Program, requiring the most extreme repeat speed violators to install Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA) devices.
• Expand the Implementation of Sammy’s Law. Expand 20 MPH speed limits within entire neighborhoods or other defined zones.
• Implement Hardened Daylighting or Better at a Minimum of 1,000 Intersections Each Year.
• Complete Safety Treatments on All Vision Zero Priority Corridors.
• Regulate Third-Party Delivery Platforms to Improve Street Safety
• Make Dangerous Driving a Key Legislative Priority in Albany
• Lead the Nation in Fleet Safety with Proven Crash-Prevention Technology
• Launch the Office of Curb Management at the Department of Transportation
• Integrate Traffic Safety Curriculum into Every Public School
• Create a Unified Vision Zero Data Warehouse
• Modernize Street Lighting to Improve Street Safety

Comment

There is a lot to like about this plan. The direction of travel is not just to make motor vehicles safer but also to reduce motor vehicle exposure.

What is missing is any outcome targets. There are many process targets, like the number of intersections to be treated, but where are the targets for reducing deaths and serious injuries over the next decade? Will this plan save 10 lives per year or 100? We have no idea.

In contrast, London has a target of a 70 per cent reduction in the number of people killed and seriously injured by 2030 compared to the 2010-14 baseline.

What Next?

Are there improvements to your road safety plan you can learn from New York?

Strategy

A Framework for Delivering Sustainable Transport?

Many transport strategies include a vision for sustainable transport. However, implementation has been difficult. This research paper identifies the key challenges hindering implementation and proposes a solution: a decision-support framework for adaptive policymaking.

Key Takeaways

• Sustainable transport requires attention to three interrelated dimensions:
  1. Social inclusion and equity
  2. Economic implications
  3. Environmental considerations
• Five key challenges in sustainable transport policymaking:
  1. Unclear policy orientation and complex trade-offs among goals - A lack of a shared understanding or agreement about desirable future states and guiding values for transport policymaking.
  2. Complexity within transport systems - limited or contested knowledge of causal relationships within the system and their evolution over time.
  3. Heterogeneity of actors involved in decision-making - transport involves a wide range of actors in policy decision-making processes, creating uncertainty as to how they will respond.
  4. Structural dominance of automobility and institutional path dependencies - lock-in effects generate resistance and remain a major barrier to the transition from a car-centric model toward sustainable transport.
  5. External forces and unknown futures - Transport systems are influenced by external developments, including global pandemics, economic crises, and technological breakthroughs, as well as long-term developments such as aging populations.
• Sustainable transport transitions may also be constrained by institutional and governance barriers within implementing organisations.
• Financial limitations, discontinuous funding streams, and limited institutional capacity can hinder translating high-level sustainability goals into concrete actions.
• Weak coordination across policy sectors (e.g., energy and transport) and governance levels may result in fragmented policy-making, inconsistent strategies, and delays in implementing transport initiatives.
• Limited public participation, lack of transparency, or overly top-down decision-making processes can undermine the effectiveness and legitimacy of sustainable transport policies.
• These uncertainties and institutional and governance constraints reinforce the need for planning approaches that can support decision-makers in handling different types of uncertainty and enable policy adjustment over time.
• The paper proposes a framework that operationalises Decision Making under Deep Uncertainty (DMDU) for sustainable transport policymaking.
• Adaptive policymaking responds to complexity by shifting decision logic from prediction to preparation, monitoring, and adaptation.
• The proposed process:
  • Phase 0: Visioning and Setting Long-Term Ambitions, in which stakeholders articulate a shared vision and the long-term goals for the transport system.
  • Phase 1: Scoping and Specifying the Basic Plan defines the policy challenge and develops an initial strategy.
  • Phase 2: Exploring Uncertainty Related to Conditions for Success and their impacts identifies uncertainties regarding technological developments, economic trends, behavioural responses, institutional dynamics, social transition, environmental conditions, and external shocks.
  • Phase 3: Enhancing Robustness (of the basic plan) and developing a Monitoring System focuses on identifying actions to strengthen the basic plan and enable adaptation over time.

Comment

This paper has a lot to take in. Fundamentally, it relies on setting a shared vision (phase 0), but this is really hard when you are talking about such a significant change to get to sustainable transport systems. Increasingly, we are seeing political parties that reject the whole concept gaining in popularity.

Even when a government sets out a clear sustainable transport vision with proper long-term goals, experience shows these visions are often more honoured in the breach than in the observance, as voters' demands (and other vested interests) for more roads create the political reality.

What Next?

Could a shared vision and this framework be adopted in your jurisdiction?

Quick Adventures in Transport Wonderland

Here is what else I came across this week:

• ​Opening up France’s passenger rail market: benefits and conditions for success - an economic study on a competitive passenger rail market in France.
• ​Road to Zero Harm Roadmap - The UK's National Highway Agency's road safety roadmap.
• ​Nobody Cares About Your Bus Lane: Transit's Marketing Gap - A blog post making the case for improving transit marketing.

Tool

London is enhancing its data around access to transport in a Sustainability Access Measure (SAM). It is a new combined measure of whole journey times to various destinations by public transport and walking. Cycling is to be considered for future updates. It will help decide how to use land in London.

Jobs

Jobs for Transport Leaders

​Here is a link with jobs around the world, specifically designed for transport leader readers. Use the filter to find jobs that match what you are looking for.