Achievements and Development Problems of Latvian National Road Safety Programme for Years 2007-2013
Proceedings of 20th Canadian Multidisciplinary Road Safety Conference (CMRSC-XX) 2010
Pāvels Jeļinskis

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the achievements of Latvian National Road Safety Programme from years 2007 to 2013. This program was developed by the government to meet the main requirements of National Transport Development Policy, that is - to reduce by 50% road accident fatalities by the year 2010 as the intermediate requirement and to reduce road traffic fatalities by 70% by the year 2013 as the final requirement (compared with the statistic data of year 2001). The paper will describe the criteria which were selected to analyze the safety situation, as well as basic statistic data of Road Traffic Safety Directorate that will show the tendencies in road safety as a result of introduction and execution of National Programme as well as the comparison of the present situation to the effectiveness of introduction of previous National Programme (years 2000-2006). The aim of National Program’s activities is primarily oriented on the „road – environment – vehicle – traffic participant” system safety level’s improvement. Analysis of the growth number of vehicles over last ten years led to the prognoses that this number will continue to grow, what can negatively affect not only traffic safety, but also the environment. So, during development of the Programme in order to make prognoses, two initial scenarios were proposed – the pessimistic scenario and the optimistic scenario. Both scenarios will be described in this paper. After that, 8 main tasks were introduced. They are: to improve a safety of pedestrians and cyclists, to improve a safety of the children in road traffic, to ensure that safe speed limitations are executed, to control and limit the number of drunk drivers, to limit a tired drivers’ participation in traffic, to lower the severity level of road accidents, to develop a wide participation of society in solving traffic safety problems, and to perform constant measures of maintaining normal traffic according to safety requirements. The cost benefit ratio based summary represents main results of the effectiveness of previous National Programme, and a prognosis of the effectiveness of the present Programme is introduced in the form of charts. This represents the effectiveness of the Programme during the realization of it in Latvia. So research continues, but the main results of the introduction of Latvian National Programme may be interesting to those, who participate in the similar National Programmes in other countries.


Keywords
road safety national programme

Jeļinskis, P. Achievements and Development Problems of Latvian National Road Safety Programme for Years 2007-2013. In: Proceedings of 20th Canadian Multidisciplinary Road Safety Conference (CMRSC-XX), Canada, Niagara Falls, Ontario, 6-9 June, 2010. Niagara Falls, Ontario: The Canadian Association of Road Safety Proffesionals, 2010, pp.12-13. ISBN .

Publication language
English (en)
The Scientific Library of the Riga Technical University.
E-mail: uzzinas@rtu.lv; Phone: +371 28399196