Abstract
Road traffic safety management aims at reducing harm - deaths, injuries, and property damage - resulting from motor vehicle accidents (crashes, collisions), and therefore to reduce number and consequences of road accidents. Although there are other major causes of road accidents - human errors, road and infrastructure deficiencies, etc. - vehicle safety per se remains one of the hottest topics. Safety is the state of “being safe", but the question is “how safe is safe enough?” or “how unsafe is critical”? Simply counting crashes and injuries and reporting on the statistical data only is often an imperfect indicator of the level of transport safety – that is how traffic safety cannot be managed. Safety of road vehicles is a very complex issue because there are vehicles of different categories, makes and kinds, but also there are new and used vehicles. Having in mind roadworthiness enforcement tools currently used in Europe and overseas, vehicle roadworthiness management should be implemented in the near future – in order to achieve it the setting-up of appropriate indicators is a must. In addition to Safety Management based theoretical backgrounds this paper studies available safety indicators and measures, and proposes the introduction of VRWPI – Vehicle Roadworthiness Performance Indicator showing the percentage of roadworthy vehicles over total number of vehicles subject to roadside inspection or roadwortiness tests. Some quality and quantity measures supporting better rating of on-condition vehicle safety performance are ellaborated, as well, including age of the vehicle, vehicles maintenance and crash & repair history, efficiency of active and passive safety systems available and some others are also, taking into consideration that all these indicators can be measured during regular PTI and/or other regular and/or supplementary roadworthiness tests.
KEYWORDS: Road vehicles, Roadworthiness, Performance, Condition Based Rating, Risk Estimation