safety - Transport Futures Institute

What every transport professional should know about road safety

Road safety refers to the interventions or countermeasures used to reduce or prevent road users from being killed or seriously injured. Let me outline some of the road safety myths and facts that every transport professional should know. 1. “Road safety is no accident” An accident is defined as … An unfortunate incident that happens unexpectedly … Read more

Are there more than 3 E’s in Road Safety?

by Phil Charles

Success in improving road safety is achieved by applying the ‘traditional’ 3 E’s: Engineering, Education and Enforcement, preferably in combination. ‘Engineering’ refers to building safer road infrastructure, traffic engineering and vehicle and equipment safety. Road safety ‘education’ is a combination of driver training, and public education, in the form of promotions or advertisements on radio, … Read more

Where the Future of Road Safety?

by Phil Charles

Road safety at its core has the inherent risks from a combination of the physical vulnerability of the human body and the levels of kinetic energy in crashes – resulting from speed and mass. Looking back, in Australia the peak road safety fatality rate occurred in the early 1970’s – in excess of 30 fatalities … Read more

Movement + Safety

by Phil Charles

In the most basic sense transport is about movement and safety. The safe movement of people and goods. Movement of people by driving or being driven, travelling by bus or train or tram, cycling and walking. There are seven whys of travel. Seven Whys Movement can be considered using the lens of the seven whys: 1 … Read more

Autonomous Shared Vehicles – a good thing?

by Phil Charles

Autonomous shared vehicles are already on the road in a number of cities in the United States. Lyft has provided 50,000 automated rides to paying passengers in Las Vegas, Nevada over the past year, with an average rating of 4.97 out of 5! 92% of passengers said they felt ‘very safe’ or ‘extremely safe’ during … Read more

Can Vision Zero improve road safety?

by Phil Charles

In 2018 an estimated 1,143 people died on Australian roads — the lowest road toll since 1929 (when the population was only one quarter of 2018). What can be done to reduce the road toll even further?

Sweden legislated Vision Zero way back in 1997 – a philosophy of road safety that aims to achive no one will be killed or seriously injured within the road transport system.

Vision Zero provides a vision of a safe road transport system which can be used to guide the selection of strategies and then the setting of goals and targets. Zero deaths are intended as long term target. It is a change from an emphasis on current problems, to being guided by what the optimum state of the road transport system should be.

Emerging fourth ‘E’ in improving road safety

by Phil Charles

Road safety has successfully applied the 3 E’s: engineering, education and enforcement, preferably in combination, as they have demonstrated their effectiveness in reducing the human costs of road crashes.

Now as a result of application of technology the potential of fourth ‘E’: encouragement has emerged as a disruptive business model.

Motor Mania

by Phil Charles

Motor Mania is a cartoon made by the Walt Disney Company in 1950. In this madcap motoring animation, Goofy transforms into a Mr Hyde-type split personality, when he gets behind the wheel.

The cartoon shows how the character, as the pleasant, friendly and good-natured ‘Mr Walker’, undergoes a change in personality to the belligerent ‘Mr Wheeler’ when he gets behind the wheel of his car.