Gadget

The project was funded by the European Commission within the 4th frame programme.

Project duration: 1998 – 1999

Objectives
In the 4th FP task 7.2/14 was entitled as follows:
"Assessment of changes in driver behaviour resulting from the introduction of in-vehicle safety devices, visual modifications to the road environment, educational, training and legal measures, and safety campaigns."

Slow or irrational reaction to unforeseeable situations was explained as an issue, an improvement of driver responses and a reduction of casualties should be the aim. The project should assist in dissemination of good practice and provide a basis for a regulatory framework. An inventory of all measures from low tech to high tech was proposed as an approach and each measure should be assessed in terms of its costs and benefits. Special attention should be given to the issue of risk compensation.

According to different traditions in traffic safety development, the five work-packages focused on different approaches:
WP1 on the influence of in-car safety devices.
WP2 on the influence of various road environments on driver behaviour.
WP3 on the influence of various education and training programs on driver behaviour.
WP4 on the influence of safety campaigns on driver behaviour.
WP5 on the influence of legal measures (including enforcement) on driver behaviour.

Results and conclusions
A limitation for interpretation of conducted studies arises generally as evaluation studies hardly ever consider behavioural variables and thus the functioning of the measures can hardly be understood, which means, that there is little basis to judge whether the obtained results can be understood as general results or whether they are just limited to certain conditions.

The empirical results have been summed up in any work-package, several work-packages put a lot of effort into a classification structure of safety measures. Classification efforts can serve at least as a first step in the impact-assessment of safety measures on the basis of a theoretical frame and provide also tools for designing and conducting reasonable evaluation studies.

The final report contains summaries of the work-package results. Much attention, however, is given to theoretical considerations upon the common issues of safety measures. The impact on the driver is proposed to be the common issue. Assessment and comparison of safety impacts have to be based on how the driver is influenced by the measures.

Impact on basic conditions of the driver, principles of behaviour regulation and adaptation-processes are the elements which need to be examined. Based on this background the impacts of the studied safety-approaches have been classified and described.

It is assumed that GADGET prepared new perspectives for the assessment of safety measures.

• The work-package reports offer a structured and detailed description of the knowledge and evidence available so far.
• The theoretical assumptions upon the mechanisms of impact on driver behaviour allow a structured consideration of the most promising applications of the various safety approaches.
• This structured approach also allows a well based discussion on reasonable combinations of traffic safety measures.

Partnership
The whole project was co-ordinated by: KfV - Austrian Road Safety Board.
Thematic work-packages were co-ordinated by the contractors:
BASt - Federal Highway Institute Germany
TØI - Institute of Transport Economics – Norway
BfU - Swiss Council for Accident Prevention
INRETS - French National Institute for Transport and Safety Research
VTT - Technical Research Centre of Finland.

The other partners were associate contractors: TRL from UK, RfT from Denmark, University of Turku from Finland, VTI from Sweden, CDV from Czech Republic, University Paris X from France, SWOV from the Netherlands, Trinity College from Ireland, DGT from Spain, Technion from Israel, LNEC from Portugal.