TITLE:
Developing a Composite Index of Child Road Safety in a Municipality
AUTHORS:
Victoria Gitelman, Sharon Levi, Etti Doveh, Liri Endy-Findling
KEYWORDS:
Child Safety; Safety Performance Indicators; Factor Analysis; Municipality
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Safety Science and Technology,
Vol.3 No.2,
June
20,
2013
ABSTRACT: Road traffic injuries are a leading cause of injury-related death
and disability in children in Israel. The use of safety performance indicators
(SPIs) is common today for benchmarking road safety performance and monitoring
of trends. This study aimed to develop a set of indicators which would assist in
diagnosis and promotion of child road safety in urban communities. A wide set
of basic indicators was defined with an interdisciplinary team of experts. A
pilot study was undertaken in four municipalities, in which the data for five
safety domains: injury, background characteristics, road user behaviors,
attitudes, policy and management—were collected and basic SPIs were estimated.
To combine the basic indicators into a composite index, for each domain, a
statistical model based on common Factor Analysis was applied. The Factor
Analysis demonstrated a reasonable way of aggregating the indicators’ meaning, for each domain considered, and produced the tools for municipalities’ comparison. It was concluded that the child road safety indicators and
composite indices developed are applicable for measuring and monitoring of
municipalities’ road safety level and practices. National authorities may use the
tools developed to compare urban communities at a regional or country level.