Road safety was the theme of the World Health Day 2004, when hundreds of organizations around the globe hosted events to raise awareness about road traffic injuries, their grave consequences, and their enormous cost to society (WHO, 2004). This reflects the importance of road safety problems and the level of concern about them (Wong et al., 2002; Loo et al., 2005). Following World Health Day 2004, an International Conference on the Application of Information and Communication Technology in Transport Systems in Developing Countries was held in Sri Lanka from 5 to 7 August 2004, at which a number of papers on road safety research were presented. These papers are worthy of further elaboration and expansion, and of being shared with a wider audience. Therefore, this Special Issue devoted to road safety has been commissioned to provide a broader platform for the dissemination of the research findings of the authors of these papers and other experts. This Special Issue consists of five papers, which are summarized in the following.
Loo et al. provide an overview of a nine-component comparative framework that was recently proposed to evaluate road safety strategies, and present a case study in which this framework is applied to review the development of the road safety strategy in Hong Kong. Newnam and Tay propose a two-stage evaluation framework for a fleet safety management information system, the first stage of which involves a qualitative focus group interview, and the second stage a quantitative questionnaire survey. The framework is used to evaluate the effectiveness of the Client Access System. Koh and Wong investigate driver performance in response to green-amber-red signal changes at junctions in Singapore. Both speed-distance and acceleration-deceleration diagrams are explored to demarcate the driving situations, which are then used to study the problem of running red lights at signalized junctions. Kim and Yamashita use the K-means clustering algorithm to examine the spatial patterns of crashes that involved pedestrians in Honolulu, Hawaii. A comparison between this technique and the hierarchical clustering technique is also given. Rifaat and Chin apply the ordered probit method to study the contributing factors that affect crash severity in terms of driver characteristics, roadway features, vehicle types, pedestrian characteristics, and crash characteristics. Time-series data for Singapore are employed to illustrate the methodology, and significant factors that are associated with injury severity are identified.
The papers that are presented in this special issue are by no means intended to be exhaustive. However, they do provide a general coverage of the important areas of research into road safety problems. The editors hope that this issue will bring state of the art research tools to the attention of practicing engineers and researchers, and will inspire and stimulate new research and efforts in the field to improve the safety performance of our highway systems.
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