Highway safety issues in rural and urban environment: verification of community perceptions

At a recent workshop on community participation in highway safety involving elected members, local government employees, regional and local transport officials, and others interested in road safety, the participants were asked to identify the most important issues in highway safety. Two independent groups identified issues of particular importance in urban and rural environments. The regional accident database has been analysed with a view to verifying whether or not the actual causes of accidents are perceived by the community as key issues requiring urgent remedial action. This paper highlights the results of this analysis with a view to establishing a correlation between the community perception versus the key actual causes of road crashes. The implications of such analysis are very important in developing road safety plans and cost-effective strategies for alleviating road crashes. The paper also outlines the objectives and proposed actions for improving road safety by targeting the issues identified as most significant in the urban and rural highway environments.