Approaches to Road Safety: Evolution, Challenges, and Emerging Technologies

Road transport is on a constant course to maintain and improve driving safety in what is a complex process involving multiple forms of risk. It is time for embracing system technologies that give more meaning to the philosophical phrase ＂safe system＂ and Approaches to Road Safety: Evolution, Challenges, and Emerging Technologies makes the case for the adoption of safer systems in road transport industries through the embracing of technological paradigms, system attributes and more clearly articulated values.

This book offers an account of the professional road safety enterprise in action in the United States, Australia and elsewhere, covering the contributions of Haddon in the 1960s, the creation of NHTSA, the development of the science of human factors, the enduring philosophy of countermeasures to motor vehicle crashes, motor vehicle safety regulations, occupant restraint and protection, collision avoidance, road and traffic design, driver assistance systems, pre-crash scenarios and vulnerable road users. It addresses the harm caused by roadway collisions, including the strategies of Vision Zero and the safe system. It places the enterprise of road safety within the greater system of road vehicle transportation. It also covers ethical preoccupations besides safety, including the rise of sustainability and its operational challenges, including uneven professionalism. Automation and the rise of driverless vehicles are discussed with these being described as a useful long-term change-agent in transportation systems. The important paradigm of connected vehicles and infrastructure is also described, along with the under-utilized science of human factors. The reader is exposed to a nuanced look at the world of road transport safety through its beginnings to the modern age of automation, allowing them to have a contextualized view of the subject area.

Offering valuable insights, this book will appeal to professionals in the fields of safety, human factors, the automotive industry, traffic control, vehicle standards and regulations, transportation systems and road safety policy.

Dr. Peter Sweatman is Enterprise Professor in the School of Engineering at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He has over 50 years’ experience in transportation research and innovation, and the application of R&D. That experience encompasses vehicles, drivers, and infrastructure and impinges on technology, policy, and strategic planning. Peter is also the former director of the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI) (2004 - 2015), and the founder and former director of Mcity (2013 - 2016). In Australia, Dr. Sweatman founded Roaduser Systems Pty Ltd, a successful freight vehicle technology business implementing research for the benefit of both the private and public sectors, including resource production, manufacturing industry, road freight transport, vehicle manufacture, highway infrastructure and maintenance and road transport policy development.