Traffic safety

The number of road crashes, fatalities and injuries is considered unacceptably high in many countries. This can be derived, for example, from the fact that the European Commission (EC, 2010) announced the ambition of halving the overall number of road deaths in the European Union by 2020, starting from 2010. At this stage a European target for...

A critical assessment of methodologies for operations and safety evaluations of freeway turbulence

Turbulence in traffic is a commonly known phenomenon, but the exact characteristics of this phenomenon are not yet clear. It reflects individual changes in speed, headways, and lanes in the traffic stream. The currently used freeway design guidelines prescribe different measures for handling turbulence, such as sufficient ramp spacing, and...

A conceptual framework for road safety and mobility applied to cycling safety

Scientific literature lacks a model which combines exposure to risk, risk, and the relationship between them. This paper presents a conceptual road safety framework comprising mutually interacting factors for exposure to risk resulting from travel behaviour (volumes, modal split, and distribution of traffic over time and space) and for risk ...

Road safety and bicycle usage impacts of unbundling vehicular and cycle traffic in Dutch urban networks

Bicycle-motor vehicle crashes are concentrated along distributor roads where cyclists are exposed to greater volumes of high-speed motorists than they would experience on access roads. This study examined the road safety impact of network-level separation of vehicular and cycle traffic in Dutch urban networks, a strategy for which the term ...

Improving the effectiveness of road safety campaigns: Current and new practices

The evaluation of campaigns aimed at improving road safety is still the exception rather than the rule. Because of this, ineffective campaigns and campaign techniques are allowed to continue to be utilised without question, while new methods of behaviour modification are often ignored. Therefore, the necessity and advantages of formally...

Did the COVID-19 pandemic influence traffic fatalities in 2020?: A presentation of first findings

The year 2020 was an extraordinary year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This pandemic resulted in lockdowns and confinements globally and emptier streets and roads. Traffic patterns and traffic composition (modal split) changed considerably during the pandemic and as a consequence the number of people killed and injured in road crashes. The aim...

Safe System approach for cyclists in the Netherlands: Towards zero fatalities and serious injuries?

More than one third of all road deaths in the Netherlands and more than two thirds of seriously injured casualties are cyclists. In recent years these shares have increased, despite the fact that the implementation of Safe System principles has been leading in road safety policy and has been successful in reducing the total number of road...

Critical assessment of methodologies for operations and safety evaluations of freeway turbulence

Turbulence in traffic is a commonly known phenomenon, but the exact characteristics of this phenomenon are not yet clear. Turbulence reflects individual changes in speed, headways, and lanes in the traffic stream. The current freeway design guidelines prescribe measures for handling turbulence, such as sufficient ramp spacing and spacing...

Driving behaviour at motorway ramps and weaving segments based on empirical trajectory data

In the vicinity of ramps, drivers make route choices, change lanes and in most cases also adjust their speeds. This can trigger anticipatory behaviour by the surrounding vehicles, which are also reflected in lane changes and/or changes in speed. This phenomenon is called turbulence and is widely recognised by the scientific literature and...

Combination of bone morphogenetic protein-2 plasmid DNA with chemokine CXCL12 creates an additive effect on bone formation onset and volume

Bone morphogenetic protein-2 (BMP-2) gene delivery has shown to induce bone formation in vivo in cell-based tissue engineering. In addition, the chemoattractant stromal cell-derived factor-1α (SDF-1α, also known as CXCL12) is known to recruit multipotent stromal cells towards its release site where it enhances vascularisation and possibly...

A New Methodology for Road Crash Data Collection in Bangladesh Using Local Record Keepers

The lack of good road crash data is a serious obstacle to analysing road safety problems in Low-and Middle-Income countries (LMICs) and this complicates, for example, the sound assessment of road safety interventions. Police crash reports are the main source of crash data, but often have significant limitations. This paper describes a...

Design guidelines for turbulence in traffic on Dutch motorways

Over the years the characteristics of traffic on Dutch motorways has changed, but its design guidelines did not develop as rapidly and large parts remain unchanged since the first guidelines from the 1970s. During the latest revision of the Dutch motorway design guidelines it became clear that a solid and comprehensive theoretical, or...

Road Safety in India: A Systems Approach

A recent estimate (WHO, 2013) suggests that worldwide 1.24 million people per year are killed in traffic. This is based on official figures, and this official figure is probably an underestimation. A large majority (92%) of road fatalities occur in the low and middle income countries that have 72% of the world’s population and 52% of all...

The future of road safety: A worldwide perspective

Estimates by the World Health Organization suggest that, on a yearly basis, road crashes kill 1.25 million people—nearly 3400 road fatalities per day—and injure up to 50 million. Traffic injuries are not equally spread over the world, however; some countries are hit harder than others, and the chance of being killed in a road crash depends on...