Citation

Aydn C, Schandersson R. Proc. Road Saf. Four Continents Conf. 2005; 13: 12p.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2005, Conference Sponsor)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In Turkey, more than nine thousand persons are killed and about two hundred thousand are injured in road accidents every year. In order to substantially reduce the problem, a Road Improvement and Traffic Safety Project was launched in 1998. Most major project components were implemented up to end of 2001. Law enforcement activities are the important parts of the whole set although the project covers all relevant aspects of road safety. The target oriented approach was introduced in the project essentially for the traffic law enforcement in Road Traffic Safety Pilot Project, referred to as the Pilot Project (PP). The target oriented approach means that goals or targets are agreed upon for different levels of implementation and that they are monitored and evaluated during the process of implementation. The set of planned actions start with resource goals. It is followed by the process and performance goals that can be translated into amount of traffic control per unit of resource used. The third step, status goals refer to or directly reflect conditions in traffic. Finally, the overall goals should be reflected in targets related to the road safety situation. The targets for the Traffic Police activities on PP roads, i.e. the allocation of patrol time to different activities, can be categorized as quantified resource goals. In addition to hours devoted to different activities, the Police patrols have also reported number of drivers fined for different types of violations. Data on Traffic Police activities were gathered from 13 road segments of the PP roads. Targets were proposed, but not decided for the other levels of planned target-oriented approach. There were substantial uncertainties in the reported data. The main obstacle preventing a complete evaluation was lack of data on traffic conditions, primarily data on speed level and speed distribution and observed number of persons not wearing seat belts. The evaluation was limited to the available data. The overall achievement of the study was the presentation of the methodology and the first trial of its application. The Police Department later decided to apply the approach in different road sections and has prepared plans for the application in the whole country.