The applicability of Smeed's Law in an evaluation of national road safety management systems: Montenegro versus Great Britain

• Published in: International journal of injury control and safety promotion Vol. 29; no. 3; pp. 406 - 419
• Main Authors: Čabarkapa, Milenko, Avramović, Zoran Ž
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Taylor & Francis 01-09-2022; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Evaluation; Fatalities; Great Britain; Management systems; Montenegro; national road safety management system; Roads; Roads & highways; Safety; Safety management; Smeed's Law; Speed limits; System effectiveness; Traffic accidents & safety; Traffic safety; United Kingdom > UK; Montenegro; evaluation; Great Britain; Smeed’s Law; Montenegro; national road safety management system
• ISSN: 1745-7300; 1745-7319
• DOI: 10.1080/17457300.2022.2067183

The need for an evaluation and international comparison of the effectiveness of national road safety management systems (NRSMSs) is growing, since international goals aim to reduce road deaths from decade to decade, which should be achieved at the national level. In addition, an NRSMS evaluation model needs to be as simple as possible to be applicable in all countries of the world. To this end, an NRSMS evaluation model was generated in this study based on Smeed's Law, which used population, vehicles, and road deaths and applied the definite integral to the following hypothesis: The effectiveness of an NRSMS is equal to the difference between the adjusted Smeed's Law assessment of road safety and the current road safety condition achieved by implementing the NRSMS. Applying this model to Montenegro and Great Britain, it was found that Smeed's Law could be used to assess the effectiveness of NRSMSs with respect to the turning point from an increasing to a decreasing number of road deaths.