Relationship between road safety and mobile photo enforcement performance indicators: A case study of the city of Edmonton

ABSTRACT Mobile photo enforcement (MPE) programs are commonly implemented to regulate speed and improve road safety. However, most previous research focuses mainly on validating the safety effects of MPE, with very minimal discussion on the enforcement performance indicators (EPIs). Therefore, the goal of this study is to provide a better understanding of the relationship between the three selected EPIs (number of enforced sites, average check length, and number of issued tickets) and the program's safety outcomes. In total, 8 years (2005–2012) of monthly citywide data were collected and used in a generalized linear Poisson model. The results show that as the number of enforced sites and issued tickets increased, the number of speed-related collisions decreased. Also, as the average check length decreased, a greater reduction of speed-related collisions was observed. These results indicate that collision reductions were associated with a MPE program that promoted: higher spatial coverage (i.e., more enforceable locations), more frequent checks (i.e., shorter average check length), and more issued tickets. The marginal effects of enforcing 100 sites and issuing 10,000 tickets per month were calculated to be 47 and 140 fewer speed-related collisions, respectively.

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