4.4. National safety levels and targets
National road safety targets are generally set in terms of numbers of accidents, casualties and fatalities, or percentage reductions to be achieved. This has been the case in The United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Sweden, Australia and many other countries. There are several reasons for this approach. First, in terms of the impact on the population, it is the absolute numbers that count. Focusing on risk might show a reduction in risk which might be the result of an increase in exposure being greater than the increase in accidents or fatalities. This would thus not lead to an absolute reduction in the number of casualties or fatalities. Targets based on risk levels are also undesirable because of the fact that risk levels in general tend to decrease over time because of the whole range of road safety activities and because of inherent changes in the traffic volumes and composition. Once having set targets in terms of numbers, it is however possible to use risk levels to check for changes in certain areas, regions or municipalities. If the number of casualties or fatalities in a region is
increasing faster than average, it is worth looking at the exposure and risk to study the differences before reaching conclusions.