How we’re working with Transport Scotland to embed Safe System principles

Agilysis is working with Transport Scotland to embed Safe System principles into the organisation to help them meet their ambition of having the ‘best road safety performance in the world.’

The 9 month long ambitious programme will provide Transport Scotland and their partners with a suite of tools that are aligned to Safe System principles and practice, addressing areas such as culture and performance. This will include the creation of a world first Safe System manual, providing guidance for Scottish practitioners and demonstrate how Safe System readiness can mature within an organisation.

We have worked with a large number of partnerships on the development of strategy including current work with the Welsh Government on their new strategy.  One of the key lessons emerging from this work is that the strategy is only the start point and that the move to Safe System implementation is a challenge pretty much everywhere. Our work reviewing road safety delivery in a number of other countries (and recently writing the manual for the World Health Organisation on how to conduct these exercises) as well as providing ongoing support to UK partnerships has given us a unique insight into the common challenges that needed to be addressed.

Transport Scotland’s commitment will require significant and sustained effort to develop and embed practice that is world leading. Building on our experience within the Safe System, we understand that the development of culture and practice will only emerge because of strategic, long-term investment in training, policy and performance management that operates across the entire Scottish system of road network operators, their supply chains, and stakeholders.

This 4-phase programme aims to assist Transport Scotland achieve their ambition by;

• Investing in Safe System Culture so that it is an approach adopted across the country and becomes what Scotland ‘does’ as established practice.
• A suite of training resources tailored to the needs of those involved in road safety in Scotland.
• Facilitating enhanced performance and analysis by working with the analytical teams to understand how data improvements can be made.
• Developing a Safe System manual, working with international experts to provide a guidebook for Scottish practitioners.

Part of the activity discussed is to explore Safe System Cultural Maturity among key partners in Scotland. This approach is unique and based on research that Agilysis have developed and tested over the last couple of years in England. The methodology and the model it is built upon is published in proceedings of the Road Safety on 5 Continents Conference (Fort Worth, 2022) and our full paper is currently in review with Accident Analysis and Prevention for publication later this year.

Agilysis are currently working with a number of international bodies (ITF, ADB, SWOV, KiM, VTi) on a further piece of work looking at application of maturity models, though it appears that ours is the only model internationally that has the diagnostic and evaluative tools for use across organisations.