Road safety and transport planning decision making and the impact on community, economy and the environment

Road safety and transport management is very important to all. Many fatal and serious accidents take place on all types of roads. Road accidents impact communities and State and Federal Governments economically, socially and environmentally. Decision making on transport network planning has an impact on society, economy; environment, travel patterns, reliability, congestion and performance of transport networks. Transport-related decisions limit transport infrastructure and often affect the performance of transport networks, critical infrastructure systems and have a huge impact on community safety. Risks to the community due to environmental disasters are high and it gets worse when it is integrated with poor decision making on transport infrastructure. Providing engineering solutions to improve road safety is useful in many cases where it is used to improve safety through traffic management processes. But decisions are being made to improve freight and goods movements which contribute towards economic growth. This paper will examine road safety issues to identify whose responsibility it is to provide road safety and decisions that are carried out during transport planning stages.