On the relationship between road safety research and the practice of road design and operation

• Published in: Accident analysis and prevention Vol. 128; pp. 114 - 131
• Main Author: Ezra, Hauer
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Elsevier Ltd 01-07-2019
• Subjects: Bias; Dysfunction; Ethics; Road-user rights; Warrants; Road-user rights; Ethics; Warrants; Dysfunction; Bias; Standards
• ISSN: 0001-4575; 1879-2057
• DOI: 10.1016/j.aap.2019.03.016

•The relationship between safety research and practice is often dysfunctional.•Twelve aspects of the dysfunction are illustrated and discussed.•Road user safety depends on how roads are built and operated.•They can rightly expect a practice that be evidence-based; it is not.•The research-practice relationship is unpremeditated; this should change.
How do the findings of road safety research affect the practice by which the road infrastructure is built and operated? The question is seldom asked. I discuss the complexities of the research-practice symbiosis in the light of two historical anecdotes. These allow me to point out several issues of concern.
My general conclusion is that the relationship, as it evolved over time, is unpremeditated and occasionally dysfunctional. Issues of concern are the lightness with which decisions affecting road-user safety can be based on opinion that is unsupported by evidence, that such opinions can trump inconvenient evidence, that research findings can be willfully distorted or disregarded, that questionable results can be given a ring of consensual truth, and that the questions which research asks and what findings get published are at times influenced by external interest. In sum, the concern is that practice is not sufficiently evidence-based. Road users have a right to expect that decisions substantially affecting their safety take into account fact-based expectation of safety consequences. It is therefore time to endow the research-practice relationship with a premeditated and purposeful structure.