New strategies for attacking the road safety problem

Reducing the severity of crashes and limiting deaths and serious injury on the road are major objectives of road safety. This is based on the contention that error is the most common cause of traffic crashes and that since error is inevitable in the road system, the best strategies for road safety are to reduce the severity of crashes and limit deaths and serious injuries.

This webinar will discuss reframing our conception of the role of error in road safety and argue that doing so offers a new avenue for improving road safety. We will review our understanding of the role of error in crashes, describe the characteristic strengths and limitations in human information processing and show how ensuring road system design is consistent with human characteristics will reduce crashes and road trauma. The webinar will end with a case study which describes this process.

Webinar Programme

Chair: Ann Williamson (Emeritus Professor and President ACRS)

Speaker 1: Max Hely (Private practitioner, Human Factors and Safety Management)
This presentation will cover the abilities and limitations that people bring to the demands of driving, their implications for road system success or failure, and a strategic approach for integrating these human factors considerations into design.

Speaker 2: Gemma Read (Associate Professor in Psychology and Director, Centre for Human Factors and Sociotechnical Systems, Uni of Sunshine Coast)
This presentation will outline a case study illustrating how Human Factors methods can be used to analyse road environments from a user-centred perspective and inform design changes to improve safety.

Panel discussion: Questions from audience

To learn more about the presentations, download the summaries here.