The City of London has initiated a strategic road safety program to reduce the number and severity of motor vehicle collisions. The basic form of the program follows the traditional state/provincial or municipal approach of analysing collision statistics, identifying the nature of the most severe problems, matching countermeasure programs to address the most severe types and developing delivery strategies. The first step in finding the target areas was to conduct a broad-based literature search and compare it to the collision database. The collision data were then analysed looking for traditional and nontraditional areas of high collision frequency. In subsequent stages of the project, there are two elements of the program which may be considered somewhat different from traditional programs. First, the selection of emphasis areas is not solely data-driven. While the basis of the emphasis areas will certainly be the hard data, the choice will be modified by input from an extensive public contact campaign (to determine perceived safety issues) as well as a selection of target areas previously determined by City staff or Council. Second, to maximize the potential for success, the choice of emphasis areas is to be adjusted based on a number of factors, which include the severity of the collisions, the potential effectiveness of the countermeasures and the capacity of the involved agencies to change or add to their current programs to deliver countermeasures specific to the safety strategy.
