LAST WORD
Secondly, we need to make the consequences of crashes far less catastrophic. This means redesigning roads, so they are safer to travel on and implementing things like intelligent speedassist on every vehicle.
Does more need to be done to discourage distracted driving?
Safety needs to be engineered into the roads from the outset, rather than it being an afterthought. Having retail, public transit, and high-speed roadways right next to each other, for example, is a formula for disaster. In such locations we have witnessed people dashing across the road to try and catch a bus, because they didn’t know when Tell us more about Together for Safer Roads the next one would arrive as the Together for Safer Roads was founded in timetables can be unreliable. 2014 to respond to the United Nations’ Data sharing between call to action around road safety. authorities can help solve this. Several small and large If people know exactly when corporations got together and a bus is going to arrive, they formed a non-profit, which is can manage their time better Together for Safer Roads, to The proportion of drivers who and cross the road safely. help the private sector admit to using their phone at Real time traffic information become more of a contributor least once a day while driving. needs to be shared with to road safety efforts around transit authorities so they At an average of 1min 52secs the world. We also refer to can share the information ourselves as a corporate social use per hour, this is like with potential users. It’s not accelerator, as although the driving 1.2 miles always thought of as a safety private sector has great blindfolded* tool, but real-time information intentions, assets, skills, and doesn’t just make transport more products, it doesn’t always know efficient, it can make it safer, too. how to contribute. We are trying to accelerate corporate efforts in the road safety area by focusing on three key areas – data How can cameras on vehicles be used to and insight, technology, and know-how – to improve road safety? help achieve vision zero. Some companies, such as Mobileye and Ford, are already exploring how cameras on passenger and commercial vehicles can be better used to identify Road fatality data is either increasing or infrastructure shortcomings. I believe there is plateauing around the world. Why do you a big opportunity in this area – if it is done in think this is? a privacy appropriate way. These cameras could I believe one of the key issues is that the wrong gather information about where the built things are being measured. Deaths and injuries environment shortcomings are and share this are looked at in the past. We need to move toward data with the public sector. Many commercial looking forward at leading indicators. We have operators already have dash cams, mainly to done a lot of work around near-miss analytics, for monitor drivers, but this footage could be used example. There is a lot of evidence that near-miss for the public good to make our roads safer. ■ data can act as a precursor to road safety.
Together for Safer Roads’ president, David Braunstein, looks at how technology and insight from the private sector can be used to make the world’s roads safer We need to make the consequences of crashes far less catastrophic. This means redesigning roads, so they are safer to travel on and implementing things like intelligent speed assist on every vehicle
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How can roads be designed so they are safer for drivers?
Intertraffic World | Annual Showcase 2022
40%
*On an averge journey. Source: Distracted Driving in Europe: How Smartphones Change the Way we Perceive Distraction on the Road by Diana Suke, head of NGO on Responsible Driving in Europe
Staying safe
Yes, it certainly does. We are aiming to accelerate efforts to eliminate distracted driving. I also believe that distracted driving is far more prevalent than the measured data from police records would suggest. Here, we need to close the data gap and be more progressive about the way we deal with this issue.
