New road safety evaluation website launched

A free website that aims to help road safety practitioners evaluate their education, training and publicity activities was launched today by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) and the Department for Transport.
At the heart of the Road Safety Evaluation website (www.roadsafetyevaluation.com) is 'E-valu-it' - an interactive tool designed to help practitioners plan, carry out, and report the results of education, training and publicity (ETP) evaluations. The site also includes background information and guidance about evaluation.
It was developed after it was found that, while evaluation of road safety engineering was already an established discipline, road safety practitioners faced difficulties in evaluating their ETP activities.
Mike Penning, road safety minister, said: "In the current economic climate everyone wants to make sure they are spending taxpayers' money in the most effective way. To do that it is vital organisations can accurately evaluate all activities - whether they are road engineering measures or education campaigns.
"This new website will allow local authorities to assess the value of education, training and publicity activities, which will in turn help them to design high quality schemes and target them where they will have the most impact. I am delighted that we have been able to work with RoSPA to develop this invaluable tool and I hope it will be widely used by road safety practitioners."
Kevin Clinton, RoSPA's head of road safety, said: "It is recognised that it is much harder to evaluate road safety ETP than road safety engineering. But it is more important than ever that we are able to demonstrate the effectiveness of what we do. The sharing of such information is also important - road safety practitioners have much to learn from each other about interventions that have worked and also those that have been less successful."
To enable knowledge to be shared, RoSPA says E-valu-it encourages users to publish their final reports on www.roadsafetyevaluation.com, as well as on the Road Safety Knowledge Centre website and their own organisations' websites.
Twelve regional workshops, involving the DfT, RoSPA and local authorities across Britain, are being held as part of the website's development.

External links

Road Safety Evaluation website
Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents
Department for Transport