Assessment of traffic safety and traffic injuries in Special Transportation Services using a mixed methods approach

The safety for older and disabled people, using Special Transportation Services (STS), has been subject for several studies, suggesting that travellers are injured without being involved in a vehicle crash. In order to estimate the societal costs for these vehicle related injuries, the focus needs to be adjusted towards an incident-oriented perspective. The aim of the project was thus to utilize such a perspective, in order to make a second-best estimation of the costs for injury incidents, related to STS in Sweden. A mixed method approach was used, involving quantitative as well as qualitative research methods. The first stage approached four different sets of data: the hospital based material (n=32), two sets of STS material (n=127), and interview based material (n=1,000). The second stage involved a qualitative approach, using focus groups in order to address the current safety culture among operators, and suggesting ways of improving safe procedures. The results showed that the injury incidence rate in STS is considerable, i.e., 3.2 per 100,000 trips (ranging from 1.5–1.9 in STS taxis and 3.6–5.6 in STS special vehicles). However, this high incidence rate is not due to road traffic crashes, but to non-collision injury incidents involving elderly and frail passengers, easily sustaining injuries from minor to moderate external violence. Typically, this violence is affecting an older female STS user, while boarding or alighting the vehicle. The societal costs, based on Swedish VOSL values, were estimated to be $ 2.60 per trip. Future injury prevention measures should therefore focus on safety during the service encounter and passenger handling: to and from the vehicle and during boarding and alighting. Also, rather than implementing rigid procedures or check-lists, the STS organisation has to acknowledge the importance of an open structure in order to promote safe behaviour.