Description: The course will cover the following topics:

• Basic concepts of accident statistics and accident theory
• Epidemiology of traffic injury – factors contributing to accidents or injuries
• Identification and analysis of hazardous road locations and high risk groups
• Speed and its regulation
• Methods for evaluating the effects of road safety measures
• Assessing the quality of road safety evaluation studies
• Meta-analysis of road safety evaluation studies
• Road safety impact assessment and policy analysis
• Normative foundations of road safety policy – ethics
• Cost-benefit analysis and monetary valuation of road safety

The first topic (basic concepts) will give an introduction to the basic concepts of road accident studies and present theories that have been proposed to explain accidents.
The second topic (epidemiology) will give a survey of basic concepts of epidemiology and their application to road safety studies, discuss problems in interpreting epidemiological studies and summarise evidence of some key factors contributing to accidents or injuries.
The third topic will present approaches to the identification of hazardous road locations and road user groups at risk. The analysis of accidents at hazardous road locations will be discussed. State-of-the-art techniques will be compared to current practice.
Speed is a key factor for road safety. Therefore, the course will discuss the importance of speed and the need for regulating it.
Several approaches have been developed for evaluating the effects of road safety measures. The fifth topic will survey these approaches and give examples of them. It will be explained why the best methods cannot always be used.
The sixth topic is how to assess the quality of road safety evaluation studies (quality). While state-of-the-art approaches may not always be used, it is always necessary to adopt a critical perspective on road safety studies and try to systematically assess their quality.
The seventh topic is meta-analysis of road safety evaluation studies (meta-analysis). An introduction to such analyses will be given and their use in summarising evidence from multiple studies will be illustrated.
Road safety impact assessment and policy analysis (policy analysis) refers to systematic analyses of the options for road safety policy. The role of such analyses in developing targeted road safety programmes will be discussed.
The normative foundations of road safety policy (normative) have always been discussed, in particular in recent years as Vision Zero has become an important part of these foundations. Ethical problems that may be associated with various normative approaches to injury prevention will be discussed.
Finally, the tenth topic will cover a particularly important part of normative policy analysis, which is cost-benefit analysis and the monetary valuation of safety (cost-benefit analysis). Key controversies associated with cost-benefit analysis will be discussed.
Form: The course will consist of lectures, group discussions and student presentations. All lectures will be given in English.
Perquisites: Basic knowledge about traffic safety
Evaluation: The PhD student is required to submit an essay on a topic concerning traffic safety chosen by each student. The topic must be approved by the course leader. The essay will be assessed by the course leader and ECTS points appointed accordingly.
Organizer: Rune Elvik, Professor, Aalborg University and Transportøkonomisk institutt (Oslo), re@toi.no and Camilla Sloth Andersen, Research Assistent, Aalborg Universitet, csa@civil.aau.dk

Lecturers: Rune Elvik, Professor, Aalborg University and Transportøkonomisk institutt (Oslo), re@toi.no, Harry Lahrmann, Associate Professor, Aalborg University, hsl@civil.aau.dk and Camilla Sloth Andersen, Research Assistent, Aalborg Universitet, csa@civil.aau.dk

ECTS: 4

Time: 1-4 September, 2015

Place: Aalborg University

Zip code: 9220

City: Aalborg

Number of seats: 30

Deadline: 1 August, 2015