Safety

To reduce the loss of life, injuries and damage to property resulting from transport accidents and crime.

It has been common practice for some time in the UK to place money values on casualties and accidents of differing severity, and to include these within a cost/benefit analysis. These values include the direct costs of accidents, such as loss of output, hospital, police and insurance costs, and damage to property and, more controversially, an allowance for the pain, grief and suffering incurred. However, in some cases there is concern with the direct safety performance of the system, it is therefore helpful to estimate accident numbers directly as well. This aspect of safety is reflected in the Accidents Sub-Objective.

The safety objective is also concerned with improving the personal security of travellers and their property. The security of public transport passengers increases with the provision of surveillance, design features which reduce the opportunities for attackers to surprise travellers and facilities for making emergency calls. The security of car users increases when the instances when they are required to stop or travel very slowly are reduced, vehicles can be parked in safety and facilities for making emergency calls are increased. These considerations are reflected in the Security Sub-Objective.

The Safety Objective has 2 sub-objectives:

• to reduce accidents
• to improve security

Key Entry Points:

Introductory Material

An Introduction to Transport Analysis, (TAG Unit 1.1) introduces the Government’s Objectives for transport and their role in the appraisal process.

Guidance for the Project Manager

The Overall Approach: Steps in the Process (TAG Unit 2.1) and Objectives and Problems (TAG Unit 2.2) provide an overview of how the identification of safety problems is integral to the study process and how the appraisal of options against the safety objective fits into the overall transport appraisal process.

The Appraisal Process (TAG Unit 2.5) explains the appraisal framework, including the Appraisal Summary Table (AST) that is used to assess the achievement of the Government’s Objectives for transport.

Guidance for the Expert

The Safety Objective (TAG Unit 3.4) provides detailed guidance on appraising against the safety sub-objectives.

A full list of TAG Units is available on the Documents page.

For further information:

The policy background to the development of the Governments five objectives for transport is set out in more detail in A New Deal for Transport, The Government's White Paper on the future of transport (DETR, 1998) and A New Deal for Trunk Roads (“The Roads Review”) (DETR, 1998). Tomorrow’s roads: safer for everyone. The Government’s road safety strategy and casualty reduction targets for 2010 (DETR, 2000) sets out road safety policy in more detail. These documents are available on the DfT website - see Transport Policy Links.