Needs and priorities of road safety stakeholders for evidence-based policy making

• Needs and priorities of road safety stakeholders were investigated through an on-line survey.
• Fifty-two items are grouped in 6 components of needs and priorities by means of PCA analysis.
• Cluster analysis of the components scores reveals four profiles of stakeholders.
• Researchers and policy makers do not have significantly different needs.
• Policy makers put particular emphasis on implementation of road safety measures.

The objective of this research is the analysis of needs and priorities of road safety stakeholders for evidence-based policy making, on the basis of a broad consultation of road safety stakeholders at international level. Needs and priorities concern both the data to be collected or made available and the tools to be developed or made available to support science-based policy-making. An on-line survey was addressed to more than 3000 stakeholders, mostly from European countries, in which participants were asked to assess the importance (high, medium or low priority) of more than 50 items reflecting data and resources for all stages of road safety policy making—from fact-finding and diagnosis, to programme development, to implementation and monitoring/evaluation. A principal component analysis technique was applied, and 6 components of data and tools were identified, concerning implementation of measures, statistical models, costs and safety impacts of measures, road infrastructure and accident analysis, common definitions and under-reporting, and crash causation. Then, cluster analysis was carried out for profiling the stakeholders, revealing 4 groups of stakeholders with similar needs and priorities in road safety data and tools: a “low priorities” group, a “need data and models group”, a group mainly interested on “implementation” and an “in-depth analysis” group. Further analysis of the cluster characteristics suggested that the 4 clusters are adequately – and often similarly – represented in all groups of countries, and in all types of organization (e.g. national administrations, universities, interest groups, road safety organizations etc.). It is also found that national/regional administrations and research institutes/universities reported practically the same needs in data and tools, not confirming the common belief that these two types of stakeholders have different needs. Finally, the “policy-makers” group within the stakeholders was found to put particular emphasis on implementation issues.