Every Accident is One Too Many Every Accident is One ... - UNECE

Chapter 3
wishes to emphasise the following three
areas where road users need to be
responsible and change their behaviour:
speeding, drink-driving, and driving
without a seatbelt.
The Road Safety Commission points to the
fact that individual road user
responsibility and opportunities for helping
to improve road safety through
personal behaviour must be
communicated by means of the most
effective media. This is to say that
electronic media such as television and
the Internet must be increasingly
incorporated in awareness-raising
campaigns. Consequently, the Road
Safety Commission proposes that more
resources be allocated in future to
preparing special efforts targeted at
electronic media with messages
concerning the importance of individual
road user behaviour.
Finally, the Road Safety Commission calls
on road user organisations and other
private organisations to accept a central
role as regards influencing individual road
user behaviour and responsibility for
avoiding accidents.
that it be considered whether the fines
collected from such automatic speed
checks could be used to finance local road
safety initiatives. The specific outline of
such a scheme should be discussed with
relevant local stakeholders and players,
such as local authorities, counties, and the
police, before a final decision is made.
Risk of accident when speeding/drinking and
driving
It is important that road users know and respond to the
increased risks linked with speeding. An Australian study
by researchers at the University of Adelaide shows that
the risk of becoming involved in a road accident is equally
great in the following situations:
1. Driving at 20 km/hr in excess of the 60 km/hr speed
limit
2. Driving with a blood/alcohol level of 2.1 o/oo
In both cases, the risk of personal injury is increased by a
factor of approximately 30.
Speed
The correlation between speed and accidents is very well
documented. Greater speed means greater risk of accident
- and if an accident does happen, greater speed means
more - and more serious - personal injuries.
A five per cent drop in average speeds would typically
entail a drop in the number of serious personal injuries by
between 10 and 15 per cent. The number of deaths would
drop by more than 20 per cent.
20
30 TIMES THE RISK
In urban traffic, a five per cent drop corresponds to a drop
in average speeds from 51.5 km/hr to 49 km/hr.
Thus, increased efforts from the police and road authorities
to reduce speeds would yield very significant results.
The Road Safety Commission recommends
the allocation of the necessary funds to
establish a nationwide system of
automated speed checks, if the current
experiments prove successful. Especially
on roads or in areas where road accidents
are frequent, road safety would benefit
from nationwide automated speed checks.
In order to increase public support for
nationwide automated speed checks, the
Road Safety Commission recommends
1075 km/hr
1
1,2
0,8
0,5
70 km/hr
65 km/hr
60 km/hr
80 km/hr
Blood/alcohol level, ‰ Speed Risk index
Figure 5. Correlation between speed and drink-driving. The risk is
set at 1 at a blood/alcohol level of 0 and an average speed of 60 km/
hr (corresponding to the 60 km/hr speed limit in Adelaide, Australia)
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