Road Safety and Environmental Benefit-Cost and Cost-Effectiveness Analysis for Use in Decision-Making

ROSEBUD is a thematic network funded by the European Commission to support users at all levels of government (European Union, national, regional, local) with road safety related efficiency assessment solutions for the widest possible range of measures. ROSEBUD will bring together e.g. users, researchers, decision makers, policy makers and other relevant stakeholders around efficiency assessment of road safety measures. It is designed to facilitate networking of organisations, co-ordination of activities and exchange and dissemination of knowledge.

Road safety is a high priority for the European Union’s Transport Policy. To reach the objective of halving the number of fatalities until 2010 throughout Europe it is necessary to exhaust the reduction potentials of a great variety of road safety measures. A prerequisite for this task is a reliable knowledge about the effectiveness and the efficiency of road safety measures. The most important achievement of efficiency assessment ought to be more efficient priorities for road safety measures, which results in a remarkable reduction of accidents. A more efficient use of road safety measures would improve public health and save expenditures.

In order to justify decisions, on which policy measures can be taken efficiently, policy makers need tools to assess the benefits and costs, or the cost-effectiveness of road safety measures.

ROSEBUD aims at more precise and easily manageable tools for the efficiency assessment, and this way, using with optimum efficiency the available resources always limited for traffic safety improvement, rescuing as many human lives and avoiding as many accident injuries and property damages as possible.

Cost-benefit-analysis

The result of the evaluation is obtained by comparing costs with benefits. Economic evaluation of road safety measures using cost-benefit analysis is based on the costs incurred as a result of road accidents. Avoiding such costs represents the economic benefit of road safety measures. The benefit-cost ratio represents the economic advantage of the safety measures.

In cost-effectiveness analyses the costs of a measure are confronted with its effects. The effects of the measure are not expressed in monetary terms.

Five major objectives of ROSEBUD can be distinguished:

• Joint conclusions about how efficiency assessment tools are used in different countries, which experiences with existing tools have been made, which results for specific road safety measures have been reached and which barriers have appeared.
• Identification of factors that prevent the use of efficiency assessment tools and major shortcomings of current analyses of road safety measures.
• Suggestions of ways in which barriers and shortcomings can be overcome and developing and improving tools and techniques for efficiency assessment.
• Testing the applicability of developed tools and/or approaches in „real" situations.
• Developing a strategic plan and instruments for the implementation of the results (Implementation Plan).

The thematic network is divided in five work packages, accompanied by a user reference group, a steering committee and a technical secretariat. At least, one international workshop will be organised in every work package and some conferences will be important milestones. Permanent communication and dissemination of results during the whole project will be carried out, e.g. via an own newsletter, internet homepage and other media.

The proposed network represents a unique co-operation of experienced and multi-disciplinary partners from different EU- and Non-EU-countries. The consortium is composed by four principal contractors and ten network members, representing 13 different countries. Also, users will be included by an user reference group.

Click here for the ROSEBUD leaflet.