One day in December 2023, I went into London for a morning of photography. It is a new hobby for me and one of my favourite YouTubers and street photographers had published a video that caught my eye, noting how good the Excel Marina was as a location for cityscape photography. Due to a lapse in my memory - specifically confusing the words ‘sunrise’ and ‘sunset’ - I found myself unable to take the photos I had planned (the sun, framed behind the London skyline). Instead, I found myself enjoying taking photographs of pretty much anything in the built environment, taking advantage of the beautiful soft morning sunlight.
One photo I took got me thinking about how much of human movement could be captured in a single photograph at this location, with its proximity to London City Airport, the Marina itself, the nearby IFS Cloud Cable Car, and the city itself with its light rail, and cars, buses, lorries, vans, bikes, scooters and pedestrians. In this photo (not a particularly good one) evidence of all are visible (or would be if I had a higher resolution camera or sharper lens).
Later in the day I was to attend the Prince Michael Road safety awards. As I was reflecting on this and the multi-modal viewpoint I found myself in, I was reminded of one of my first projects at TRL - which examined how transport modes differ in their approach to the management of risk. Since my time taking cityscape photos would have to wait for another day (crucially, another evening) I thought it might be nice to reflect upon the ways in which road transport still needs to catch up in this regard.
How do the modes approach the management of risk?
The first thing that is obvious is that modes other than road all make much more use of precursor events as indicators of risk, and system-wide approaches to manage them. The aviation industry is known for rigorous risk management for example, and a great deal of importance is placed upon the use of precursor events such as 'near misses' as indicators of risk for crashes although improvement is always possible. The use of a Safety Management System approach is also the norm; this blog gives some excellent examples, such as the way in which maintenance and repair data are used to calculate risk in the aviation industry.
The maritime and rail transport sectors similarly rely heavily on system-wide approaches. Maritime uses sophisticated technologies to help avoid collisions at sea, perhaps most importantly that of Automatic Identification Systems (AIS - see here for a description), which is broadly agreed to have led to improvements in safety. The rail sector uses the Safety Risk Model which again focuses on a proactive approach to estimating risk explicitly using the Common Safety Method (CSM).
The cable car - which I mention because of my use of it on my photography trip - is a less common transport mode, but one in which a system-wide approach to safety is surely used. This article argues that cable cars belong in cities as part of the transport mix. Another article presents some statistics showing that cable cars are extremely safe as a mode of transport. I am sure there are more formal statistics that could be consulted, but again I feel like precursors (fraying lines, loose bolts) are likely treated as important in the avoidance of incidents. If there are any cable car experts reading this, please enlighten me with extra detail!
The approach taken in road transport seems to me to still be, sometimes at least, reactive rather than proactive. I still speak all the time with businesses who proudly state that they track collisions to monitor progress in the management of risk. There is still a public perception that drivers are somehow to blame for much of the injury and death on the roads - a standpoint that often ignores other system components. Countless examples in mainstream media are available, on drivers who are found guilty of causing collisions through using a mobile phone or speeding; but there is rarely as much media attention applied to the system-wide questions that might be asked in these examples - questions like “Why do we allow vehicle manufacturers to encourage infotainment device connectivity with their in-vehicle systems?” And “Why do we have cars that allow drivers to break the speed limit, when we have technologies like Intelligent Speed Assistance that are readily available and can stop it?”
Sometimes I wonder whether this culture of looking for blame is partly responsible for how slowly we have moved towards real systems thinking in road safety. This was another difference that we noted in our 2008 to 2010 work (and suggested should change). Rail, air and maritime modes have dedicated independent accident investigation bodies and a national regulator involved in incident investigation and reporting. Although with recent discussions about a Road Safety Investigation Branch we are getting closer to a similar situation in road transport, currently the lead role in collision reporting and investigation is handled by the police; although they do a fantastic job on this, one thing that arguably hampers their ability to learn lessons is their need to focus on assigning blame. An independent function, modelled on something like the TRL RAIDS project, will help bring road transport up to standard on how incident investigation is used to avoid future mistakes.
What next for roads?
Unlike in 2010 when I was working on that early multimodal risk project, we now have in the UK at least an understanding of a framework - the Safe System approach to road safety - that can accommodate the kind of proactive approach to risk used in the other modes. Those responsible for managing road transport are starting to understand that the days of solely blaming the user, and the days of waiting for collisions to occur in obvious ‘blackspots’ are gone. We understand that if we can take a system-wide approach, prioritising safe roadsides, safe speeds, safe vehicles with high standards and technologies, and post-crash care, as well as user awareness and training, we can have a much greater impact. Tools like iRAP (for which TRL is the UK’s centre for excellence) are available to help with this proactive approach.
In my opinion, we need to continue this shift from a reactive stance to a more preventative and holistic approach towards road safety if we are to 'catch up' with the other modes and make our roads as safe as our skies, tracks, seas, and even cables. I, and my peers working in road safety, want collisions to become the end we seek to avoid, rather than the indicator we watch. We need to be looking at the behaviours and system states happening in front of us right now as the indicators of risk, not just things to be noticed when they lead to collisions, loss and harm.
