Don't wait for accidents to happen

Traffic Safety Researcher’s Course

Traffic Safety Researcher’s Course is usually given in connection to ICTCT conferences. The mission of the course is to provide a coherent view into traditional and modern traffic safety theories, methods and solutions. It also stresses the importance of the institutional framework necessary for consequent long-term traffic safety work.

The next course is organised on 6–7 June 2023 in connection to the XII (extra) ICTCT conference in Winneba, Ghana.

More information will come in due time.

Upcoming course

About the course

When?

6–7 June 2023, in connection to the XII (extra) ICTCT conference.

Where?

Winneba, Ghana
University of Education, Winneba
North campus, Student Center

Course fee

The course fee is €100.
The special fee for Ghanaian participants is GH₵700.

The fee includes tea/coffee-breaks and simple lunches. The participants will receive access to the presentation materials after the course.

The fee DOES NOT include registration to the ICTCT conference.

Course language

The course is given in English.

Registration & payment

Registration form

We have reached the maximum amount of course participants. New registrations are not possible anymore.

Participants who registered but not paid yet can still use the links below to complete their payments.

Course fee

The regular course fee is €100.

The payment can be done using a PayPal account or a credit card (Visa, MasterCard, etc.). The transactions are handled entirely by the PayPal service, and ICTCT will not have access to any sensitive information of yours.

In case PayPal is not a viable option for your country, a direct bank transfer could be made to the account specified below.

The special fee for Ghanaian participants is GH₵700.

This fee should be paid by a bank transfer to the following account:

Account number: 4011405999
Account holder: Enoch Frederick Sam
Bank: Zenith Bank Ghana Limited
Bank address: Zenith Heights, No. 31 Independence Avenue, PO Box CT 393, Accra
Swift code: ZEBLGHAC

All costs related to the money transfer MUST be covered by the participant. Note that persons paying for conference or course fees via the swift bank transfer should send the swift or transfer advice issued by their bank to the email address: efsam@uew.edu.gh.

Syllabus

Motivation

The road accident phenomenon is complex and so are road safety management systems. As a consequence, road safety research is multi-disciplinary and covers such areas as epidemiology, statistics, in-depth accident analyses, biomechanics, behavioural studies, sociology, economics, etc. Researchers new in the field of road safety are usually limited to a specific field of investigation in which they work in-depth without getting the broader picture of what is being done in road safety research and how the different investigation fields complement each other.

The mission with the course is to give the participant a coherent view into traditional and modern traffic safety theory, methods and solutions and to have a clear understanding of the importance of the institutional framework in order to be able to make a difference in the traffic safety work subsequently. It is hoped that at the end of the course, participants will be able to situate their own work within a broader framework, and will find it easier to communicate with researchers from other disciplines.

Course objectives

  • Provide researchers with an overview of theories and concepts in road safety and the associated research approaches and methods, in line with ICTCT goals and fundamentals
  • Discuss key issues in road safety research
  • Provide in-depth knowledge of research approaches and findings on some selected topics and their implications for other fields of road safety
  • Provide an opportunity for exchange of experience between researchers from different disciplines and different parts of the world

Target audience

Road safety researchers from all disciplines, in all sectors (Public Health, Transport, Urban Planning, Education, Law, Academia, etc.) and from all countries are welcome.

In order to facilitate interactions, the number of participants is limited to 15.

PhD students may be able to get credits for this course at their home university and should ask for information from their supervisors.

International faculty

The course faculty consists of senior researchers and university professors with an extensive experience in road safety.

Attila Borsos
University of Gyor
Hungary

Attila Borsos received his master’s degree in Economics from the University of Gyor, Hungary and in Civil Engineering from Delft University of Technology, Netherlands. He gained his PhD in Civil Engineering from the University of Gyor, Hungary, where he is associate professor in the Department of Transport Infrastructure and Water Resources Engineering since 2012 and vice dean for research in the Faculty of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Transport Sciences since 2015. He was a Visiting Scholar at Florida Atlantic University in 2013 and a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the University of Connecticut in 2010. He was a member of the PIARC World Road Association Technical Committee 3.2 “Design and Operation of Safer Road Infrastructure” from 2012 to 2015. His main research interest is road safety, more specifically accident prediction models, traffic safety trends, surrogate measures of safety, and the effect of Autonomous Vehicles on safe road design.

James Damsere-Derry
CSIR-Building & Road Research Institute
Ghana

James Damsere-Derry is Senior Research Officer at CSIR-Building & Road Research Institute, Kumasi, Ghana. He holds a B.A. in Geography and Sociology from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science & Technology, Kumasi, Ghana, a Master of Public Health from the University of Washington, USA, and Ph.D. in Road Safety Research from the Centre for Accident Research & Road Safety-Queensland, Queensland University of Technology, Australia.

Dr. Damsere-Derry’s main research fields in road safety are speeding, drink/drug-driving and social and psychosocial determinants of road traffic injuries. He has published over 20 scientific articles and has contributed to scientific conferences. He is a member of the International Council on Alcohol, Drugs and Traffic Safety, the International Epidemiological Association as well as the Road Traffic Injuries Research Network.

Stijn Daniels
Transport & Mobility Leuven
KU Leuven
Belgium

Stijn Daniels, the president of ICTCT, is a researcher and consultant in transport planning, road safety and mobility at Transport & Mobility Leuven (TML), Belgium. He is also a part-time professor in Traffic and Transport Safety at KU Leuven, faculty of Engineering.

His primary research interest is road safety: causes and mechanisms associated with road crashes and near-crash events, effects of road design on crash occurrence, safety issues for vulnerable road users, effectiveness analysis, cost-benefit analysis and economic valuation.

Wafa Elias
Shamoon College of Engineering
Israel

Wafa Elias works in the fields of travel behavior and road safety, with particular expertise in factors that impact travel behavior and road safety among the Israeli Arab minority.

Wafa Elias has developed a theoretical framework that connects daily activity patterns and driving behavior, and the risk of being involved in road crashes.  To better understand these complex relationships, Wafa focuses on disaggregate studies of individual characteristics, attitudes, activity and travel behavior, residential location, the build environment, social interaction, and the impact of these on road safety.

Haneen Farah
Delft University of Technology
the Netherland

Dr. ir. Haneen Farah is an Associate Professor in the Department of Transport and Planning and a co-director of the Traffic and Transportation Safety Lab at the Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. Her research interests lie in the fields of road infrastructure design, road user behaviour, and traffic safety. She is currently investigating the implications of the advances in vehicle technology and automation on these fields. In her research she combines her expertise in transportation engineering, with her curiosity in the fields of human factors and econometrics.

Before joining TU Delft Haneen Farah was a postdoctoral researcher at KTH, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. She received her M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Transportation Engineering from the Technion- Israel Institute of Technology.

Sonja Forward
Swedish Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI)
Sweden

Dr Sonja Forward is a psychologist and a research leader at the Swedish Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI) focusing on traffic safety and sustainable transport. Her research covers many areas but mainly psychological factors predicting behaviour and how unwanted behaviour can be changed, using education or campaigns. The methods used are both quantitative and qualitative.

Sonja Forward has been in charge of numerous projects both nationally and internationally. She has produced written materials including an extensive manual for working with campaigns. She is also lecturing on a regular basis and have presented papers at numerous conferences, mostly as an invited speaker.

Aliaksei Laureshyn
Lund University
Sweden

Aliaksei Laureshyn is Reader in traffic safety and a senior lecturer at Lund University, Sweden. His primary research interests deal with theory and practical use of pro-active methods in road safety analysis. He is an active member in several international committees and working groups related to the subject of Surrogate Measures of Safety (SMoS). Other research interests include emerging technologies for data collection in traffic, policy and practice in road safety work, particularly in the view of Vision Zero/Safe System paradigm.

Enoch F. Sam
University of Education, Winneba
Ghana

Enoch F. Sam is an Associate Professor of Transport Geography at the University of Education, Winneba, Ghana. He has over ten years of experience in teaching and research in public transport safety management, traffic safety, traffic behaviour of vulnerable road users, and sustainable urban mobility. He has published over 20 scientific articles, five book chapters, and a book and has contributed to scientific conferences. Prof Sam has won many research and academic awards and grants. He is currently an Executive Board member and Lead country researcher of the European Commission funded-project AfroSAFE. He also serves as an Associate Editor of the Humanities and Social Sciences Communications; Editorial Board member of the Transactions on Transport Sciences (TOTS) and the African Journal of Social Sciences Education.

András Várhelyi
Lund University
Sweden

András Várhelyi is Professor of Transport at the Lund University, Sweden. His main research fields are Road safety, Road safety measures, ITS and Driver Assistance Systems and evaluation of their effects. His teaching activities comprise supervising PhD and MSc theses, as well as training transport professionals in Road Safety Management and Road Safety Engineering internationally. He is the author of scientific articles (N~30), conference papers (N~60) research reports (N~70) and popular scientific articles. He is member of the ICTCT since 1990s and one of the founders of the The Nordic Traffic Safety Academy (currently one of the ICTCT’s sub-committees).

Rune Elvik
Institute of Transport Economics
Norway

Rune Elvik has been a road safety researcher at the Institute of Transport Economics since 1980. His main areas of research have been evaluation studies, meta-analysis and cost-benefit analysis.

Rune Elvik served as editor-in-chief (together with Karl Kim) of Accident Analysis and Prevention from 2005 to 2013. He has participated in many European projects and contributed to the Highway Safety Manual. He has published more than 150 papers in scientific journals.

Anja Huemer
Universität der Bundeswehr München
Germany

Anja Huemer is a professor for traffic psychology at Universität der Bundeswehr München, Germany (starting from September 2022). She received her PhD on the measurement of driver distraction in 2012 from Technische Universität Braunschweig. Her main research interests are the safety and comfort of vulnerable road users and the promotion of sustainable transport by system design. She has been teaching research and presentation methods for more than 15 years.

Csaba Koren
University of Gyor
Hungary

Csaba Koren received his master’s degree in Civil Engineering from the Budapest University of Technology in Hungary in 1972. He earned his PhD from the same university in 1978. He has been working with the Transport Research Institute in Budapest until 1977, when he moved to the University of Gyor. His teaching activity focused on road design, traffic engineering and urban sustainability. He has been a head of the Department of Transport Infrastructure for about 20 years.

Csaba Koren is a member of several international editorial boards. He has been a supervisor of seven successful PhD candidates. His main research interest is road safety. He regularly organizes road safety auditor courses and follow-up trainings. In 2018 he retired, but he is still active in teaching, research, and consultancy.

Rob Methorst
Rijkswaterstaat Water, Traffic an Environment [retired] / Streets for People
the Netherlands

Rob Methorst has more than 40 years of professional experience in tackling road safety and promoting pedestrian interests. He graduated as a Social Geographer—Land Use Planner. Since his retirement in 2015, he has been a guest researcher for pedestrian safety at Institute for Road Safety Research SWOV, where he worked on his thesis on pedestrian policy (promotion February 2021). He is the secretary of MENSenSTRAAT, and was chairman and initiator of the European project COST358 Pedestrians’ Quality Needs (2005–2010), chairman of the CROW Design Guides for Pedestrians. Rob has previously done research and policy advice on vulnerable road users, and pedestrians in particular, for the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment (1999–2015), the former Pedestrian Association (1990–1999) and the Regional Road Safety Board in Drenthe (1981–1990). In doing so, he mainly focused on the possibilities of aligning (strategic) policy with human needs, and skills and possibilities of human behaviour.

Matúš Šucha
Palacky University in Olomouc
Czech Republic

Matúš Šucha is a Czech traffic psychologist. His main area of professional interest is traffic psychology, with a specific focus on mobility, sustainability and active traffic modes. Associate Professor Šucha is an active member of numerous prestigious international organisations, including ICTCT—International Cooperation on Theories and Concepts in Traffic Safety, TPI—Traffic Psychology International or DGVP—Deutsche Gesellschaft für Verkehrspsychologie.

Ralf Risser
Palacky University in Olomouc
Czech Republic

Course programme

6 June 2023

Road safety problems and collection of data

’How to measure Road Traffic Safety?’

András Várhelyi
Lund University, Sweden

This lecture will be about what exposure data to be used for risk assessment; road fatality trends historically; the correlation between human live values and fatality rates; 3-dimensional analysis of accidents; problems with using accidents; non-accident based road safety indicators to analyse the traffic safety situation.

’The state of road safety in Ghana’

Enoch Sam
University of Education, Winneba, Ghana

The lecture will present a trend analysis of Ghana’s road safety situation (crashes, fatalities, risk factors etc.). The lecture will present a framework for promoting road safety management. Course participants will develop (group activity) relevant recommendations (policies, interventions, and strategies) to enhance road safety management in Ghana, amenable to other African countries.

’Sources and harmonization of road traffic crash data’

James Damsere-Derry
CSIR-Building & Road Research Institute, Kumasi, Ghana

Road traffic crash database is an important source of information for understanding road safety scenarios like patterns, trends and severity. A reliable data source is not only important for national planning and target setting purposes but also for international comparison which allows for adopting best practices from countries doing well. The credibility and authenticity of a crash database is underscored when different sources tend to report values that are comparable and shows less disparities.

’Surrogate measures of safety and behavioral observation studies’

Aliaksei Laureshyn
Lund University, Sweden

Quite often, researchers cannot rely on historical accident counts due to their scarcity, poor quality (due to under-reporting or errors in coding) or simply due to  absence of any history (in case of newly built sites). In such situations, alternative methods for measuring safety performance are called for. In this lecture we will discuss how traffic conflict and behavioural observations can be used as a complement—or a supplement—for accident data. A significant part of the lecture will be devoted to watching and discussing the actual traffic videos, what safety relevant information could be extracted from them and how it should be interpreted and generalized.

7 June 2023

Traffic safety measures and policies

‘Introduction to contributing factors to accidents, theory of countermeasures, human factors’

Attila Borsos
University of Gyor, Hungary

In this lecture the 3-dimensional analysis of road safety problems (exposure, risk, consequence) as well as the various factors affecting these dimensions will be explained. Countermeasures in the domains of infrastructure, vehicle and road user directed to these three dimensions will be then discussed. The Haddon Matrix will be also covered, which is an in-depth crash analysis tool to evaluate safety issues before, during and after the crash.

‘How does infrastructure influence road safety behavior?’

Haneen Farah
Delft University of Technology, the Netherland

In her interactive lecture Haneen will discuss how does the infrastructure design influence road safety behaviour. We will discuss together how to apply key human factor concepts and theories in road infrastructure design, and how by this we can influence road users’ behaviour and increase safety.

‘How do (information) campaigns influence road safety behavior?’

Sonja Forward
Swedish Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI), Sweden

A traditional approach taken in road safety research has been to view accidents as a failure to cope with the perceptual motor skills required for a safe journey. The task was therefore to increase driver’s skills and to modify the environment. However, in recent years, it has been found that the problem does not always lie in what the driver can or cannot do but what he/she decides to do. The crucial issue is therefore to understand what motivates drivers to commit an act, which puts both themselves and others at risk. Different campaigns have been developed trying to change peoples’ behaviour although some of them have had little or no effect. One conclusion drawn from this could be that money could be better spent. However, in this lecture I will argue that the reason for this failure is that the programmes are poorly developed and use a language which does not address the psycho-social processes underlying the behaviour.

‘How does enforcement influence road safety behavior?’

Wafa Elias
Shamoon College of Engineering, Israel

Wafa’s lecture will give an overview of deterrence theories.  She will highlight the effectiveness of the various penalties by examining the impact of demographic and socio-economic characteristics on the effectiveness of the various penalties. We will try together to show who the traffic offenders are, and which factors contribute to the involvement and repetitiveness of offenses.

‘Safe System in traffic safety’

Stijn Daniels
Transport & Mobility Leuven | KU Leuven, Belgium

In this session we will introduce the principles of a Safe System approach to road safety. Such an approach looks at safety as an integral part of the wider road traffic system. We will discuss in the group to what extent this approach differs from other approaches and what consequences this could have on current road safety policies.

Course programme

25 October 2022

9.00

Introduction: course & faculty

Introduction, participants: wants & needs

Wafa Elias
SCE, College of Engineering, Israel

Road safety policy and data

9.40

’Safe System in traffic safety’

Stijn Daniels
Transport & Mobility Leuven | KU Leuven, Belgium

11.00

Coffee break

11.20

’Traffic accident data and how to work with it’

Rune Elvik
Institute of Transport Economics, Norway

12.40

Lunch

13.10

’Surrogate Measures of Safety’

Aliaksei Laureshyn
Lund University, Sweden

14.30

Coffee break

14.50

’Tools for infrastructure safety assessment’

Csaba Koren
University of Gyor, Hungary

16.10

Break

16.20

Discussion 1: ’Road safety data—what questions can be answered and what is missing’

17.20

End of the day

26 October 2022

9.00

Mid-course recapitulation

Wafa Elias
SCE, College of Engineering, Israel

Traffic safety from different perspectives

9.10

’Accounting for human factors in road system design’

Attila Borsos
University of Gyor, Hungary

10.30

Coffee break

10.50

‘Traffic psychology: a holistic perspective’

Matúš Šucha
Palacky University in Olomouc, Czech Republic

12.10

Lunch

12.50

Discussion 2: ’Human- or car-centered traffic system?’

13.50

Break

Research that makes a difference

14.00

’How to make improvements happen: connecting research to policy making’

Rob Methorst
Rijkswaterstaat Water, Traffic an Environment [retired] / Streets for People, the Netherlands

15.20

Coffee break

15.40

’Presentation skills to make impact’

Anja Huemer
Universität der Bundeswehr München, Germany
Aliaksei Laureshyn
Lund University, Sweden

17.00

Closing & evaluation

Wafa Elias
SCE, College of Engineering, Israel

17.20

End of the day

Contact

Course contents Registration & payments
Wafa Elias
Anja Katharina Huemer
Clemens Kaufmann

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