Road Safety Performance Indicators: Database Development. Deliverable D3.12 of the EU FP6 project SafetyNet.

Between November 2004 and March 2008 the Performance Indicators team, of the SafetyNet project distributed a number of questionnaires, the aim of which was to collect data for the calculation of a number of Safety Performance Indicators. This paper describes work undertaken as part of this project to build a European database of the data collected. Contained in the database is information describing factors such as the contribution of impairment to fatalities, rates of use of protective systems, levels of speeding, use of daytime running lights and the operation of the trauma care system. Data is available for the majority of the EU27 countries (EU25 + Norway and Switzerland) and is generally suitable for the calculation and validation of safety performance indicators. As well as final figures for a number of important road safety performance variables, the database contains a wealth of metadata, describing the methodologies used to measure, calculate or estimate the final figures, the sampling techniques used and details of any studies of random or systematic errors in the figures. Allowing researchers to make informed decisions about whether comparisons between countries are appropriate, and to what extent such comparisons can reflect genuine differences in road safety between countries.