Identifying the most significant indicators of the total road safety performance index. Case study: European Union

Abstract

The review of the national and international literature dealing with the assessment of the road safety level has shown great efforts of the authors who aimed to define the methodology for calculating the composite road safety index on a territory (region, state, etc.). The procedure for obtaining a road safety composite index of an area has been largely harmonized. The question that has not been fully resolved yet concerns the selection of indicators. There is a wide range of road safety indicators used to show the road safety situation in a territory. The road safety performance index (RSPI) obtained on the basis of a larger number of safety performance indicators (SPIs) enables decision makers to more precisely define earlier goal- oriented actions. Recording a broader comprehensive set of SPIs helps identify the strengths and weaknesses of an area’s road safety system. Providing high quality national and international databases that would include comparable SPIs seems to be difficult since many countries dispose of a small number of identical indicators available for use. Therefore, there is a need for calculating a road safety performance index with a limited number of indicators (RSPIln n ) which will provide a comparison of sufficient quality, of as many countries as possible. The application of the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method and correlation analysis has helped to check if the RSPIln n is likely to be of sufficient quality. A strong correlation between the RSPIln n and the RSPI based on all indicators has been identified using the proposed methodology. This will help achieve the standardization of indicators including data collection procedures and selection of the key list of indicators that need to be monitored.