Road safety refers to the methods and
measures used to prevent road users from being killed or seriously injured.
Typical road users include: pedestrians, cyclists, motorists,
vehicle passengers, horse-riders and passengers of on-road public
transport (mainly buses and trams).
The basic strategy of a Safe System approach is to ensure that
in the event of a crash, the impact energies remain below the threshold likely
to produce either death or serious injury. This threshold will vary from crash
scenario to crash scenario, depending upon the level of protection offered to
the road users involved. For example, the chances of survival for an
unprotected pedestrian hit by a vehicle diminish rapidly at speeds greater than
30 km/h, whereas for a properly restrained motor vehicle occupant the
critical impact speed is 50 km/h (for side impact crashes) and 70 km/h
(for head-on crashes).
As sustainable
solutions for all classes of road have not been identified, particularly
low-traffic rural and remote roads, a hierarchy of control should be applied,
similar to classifications used to improve occupational safety and health. At
the highest level is sustainable prevention of serious injury and death
crashes, with sustainable requiring all key result areas to be considered. At
the second level is real time risk reduction, which involves providing users at
severe risk with a specific warning to enable them to take mitigating action.
The third level is about reducing the crash risk which involves applying the
road design standards and guidelines (such as from AASHTO), improving driver
behavior and enforcement.
The road
safety market ecosystem includes major players, such as Jenoptik (Germany),
Kapsch Trafficcom (Austria), Sensys Gatso Group (Sweden), Redflex Holdings
(Australia), American Traffic Solutions (US), Idemia (France), Flir Systems
(US), Motorola (US), Swarco (Austria), Information Engineers Group (Canada),
Cubic Corporation (US), Siemens (Germany), Thales (France), Conduent (US),
Vitronic (Germany), Trifoil (Germany), Kria (Italy), Laser Technology (US),
Optotraffic (US), Syntell (South Africa), Traffic Management Technologies
(South Africa), Aabmatica Technologies (India), Clearview Intelligence (UK),
Dahua Technology (China), and Truvelo (UK).
No comments:
Post a Comment