The Road Ahead

Abstract

Our road safety future is shaped by decisions that affect the amount of trip making, mode of travel used, kinds of infrastructure on which travel takes place, vehicle fleet, technology in use, and the prevailing norms of behavior. While in the past most such decisions were based on intuition and judgement, there is an obvious trend toward decisions based on fact and science. This transition from a “pragmatic” to a more “rational” style of road safety management is hungry for factual knowledge and for professionals to be its purveyors. Consequently, a broad class of professionals, those who influence the future of road safety, needs to be trained in what fact-based road safety knowledge exists. In addition, a vibrant, competent community of road-safety researchers has to be created. They need to be trained in the same road safety knowledge as well as in research methods. Above all they need to be freed from the constraints imposed on them by a myopic class of research administrators. The best interest of society is to move toward the gradual establishment of the rational style of road safety management; it is the engineer’s professional obligation to promote this societal interest.