Synthesis of Safety for Traffic Operations - Transports Canada

Synthesis of Safety for Traffic Operations March 2003
A scientific paper, to be of value to the road safety community, either researcher or
practitioner, should provide enough information for readers to assess observations, repeat
the studies (if desired), and evaluate the intellectual processes.
The essential elements of a quality scientific paper are undisputed:
• Introduction: What is the problem or issue being addressed?
• Materials and Methods: How was the problem studied?
• Results: What was found?
• Discussion: What do the findings mean?
The introduction generally includes a review of the literature on the subject matter.
Which, as discussed in Appendix A is an essential element of determining causation.
This element of papers reporting on road safety is usually present.
In many instances it is the “Materials and Methods” section that is incomplete. In
particular the method of site selection, and the limitations associated with a non-random
selection of sites (which is often the case) are missing elements of road safety
documentation. It has been clearly established that studying treatments at sites that were
selected because of an abnormally high crash frequency will overestimate treatment
effectiveness because of regression to the mean effects. Appraisal and application of
research results that fail to report on methods and materials in a meaningful way severely
hampers the road safety effort of practitioners. In a worst-case scenario, erroneous
results that cannot be deciphered because of a lack of information on research methods
may be used to make decisions respecting road safety.
Recognizing that many practitioners will seldom be able to use the most current and
rigourous methods, an important part of the documentation is a discussion on the
limitations of the research methods used.
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