Why are there so few experimental road safety evaluation studies: Could their findings explain it?

Abstract

Randomised controlled trials (also known as experiments) are widely regarded as the best design of studies that aim to estimate the effects of a treatment, like a road safety measures. However, as noted by Hauer (2016) there are few randomised controlled trials in the field of road safety. Hauer has suggested (2019) that not finding an effect of the measure being evaluated could be one reason for this. This paper provides an inventory of experimental evaluations of road safety measures. 24 different road safety measures have been evaluated experimentally. More than one experiment was reported for 8 road safety measures; for the other 16 only a single experiment was found. With few exceptions, experiments find no effect on accidents of the measures subjected to experiments. Most of the exceptions are due either to failure of randomisation or refer to measures whose effects tend to erode as they become more commonly used. Thus, the effects found in initial experiments with daytime running lights and high-mounted stop lamps have gradually eroded as more cars got these systems. Driver training is one of the few road safety measures for which more than one experiment has been carried out. Results consistently show no effect on accidents of driver training.