A comparison of traditional road safety assessment methods and the newly developed 'road safety deserts' approach

Road fatalities were labelled a pandemic as early as 1973 (BMJ 1973). The number of road fatalities reached 1.35 million in 2016. Currently over 3 500 people perish every day on the world's roads. South Africa has one of the highest road fatality rates in the world, with a fatality rate of 25.9 deaths per 100 000 population (WHO 2018). In order to understand and improve the road safety situation of a region, effective road safety assessments must be carried out. This paper presents a comparison of four different road safety assessment approaches, both traditional and novel, and serves as a proof of concept for the 'road safety desert' methodology, a new technique adapted from the 'transit desert' concept. This new approach to road safety assessment explores the possibility of geo-coded supply and demand comparisons to identify 'road safety deserts' - areas that have a comparatively higher road safety risk. This paper shows that there are several unique and effective ways to assess road safety, and that each approach incorporates different characteristics within their methodologies. It is recommended that road safety analysis is conducted using a multitude of methods, so as to improve understanding and intervention selection.