SUSTAINABLE SAFETY AND THE ROLE OF BEHAVIOURAL RESEARCH

In the Netherlands, in the early nineties the concept of 'sustainable safety' was introduced with the aim to give a new impulse to road safety work. In a sustainable safe traffic environment, road infrastructure is designed in such a way that the chance of an accident occurring is very limited. Where an accident cannot be prevented, the chance of serious injury is markedly reduced. A very important characteristic of a sustainable safe traffic system is that all relevant characteristics of infrastructure, vehicle and traffic regulations are maximally tuned to the capabilities and limitations of the road users. The paper provides a short introduction to the concept of sustainable safety and focuses on the role of behavioural research in the elaboration of the general concept into concrete road infrastructure design characteristics. It is concluded that road design is a powerful instrument to influence road user behaviour, but that the knowledge about the relationship between road design and the behaviour of individual road users is still very limited. The area deserves more attention in traffic psychology. As an example, the set-up of a Dutch joint research programme is briefly discussed. For the covering abstract see ITRD E113725.