Austria

A report from the Austrian Road Safety Board, "Requirements for an Austrian Road Safety Programme 2002-2010", looks at Austrian road safety efforts. It provides an overview of all relevant Austrian organisations and analyses the country's road accident characteristics and trends. It also looks at risk exposure for various categories of road users and measures to improve road safety. Key priority areas have been identified and the long-term vision of Austria's road safety strategy sets two numerical targets:

• To reduce the number of road accident fatalities by 25% and other casualties by 10% by 2004 (relative to the average from 1998-2000).
• To reduce the number of road accident fatalities by 50% and other casualties by 20% by 2010 (relative to the average from 1998-2000).

Road Safety Priorities

The priority areas in the Austrian road safety strategy are divided according to their place in the road transport and safety system: human behaviour, infrastructure, vehicle and the framework of constraints. Each of these areas harbours various clusters of measures, detailed into very specific measures. For each of the measures, three possible time frames - short, medium and long term - for the introduction and implementation have been given.

• Human behaviour

Safety equipment (restraint systems).

The target is to increase seat belt use by at least 10% by 2010 as well as increase the use of child restraint systems to at least 95%. The following specific measures are given:

• Information brochure: "Safely on the road – child safety in cars"
• Award-winning TV spot: "Belts save lives"  
• Creating and raising awareness: continuous information provision and campaigns
• Dedicated, targeted enforcement
• Amendments to legal framework for checks
• Support for initiatives for alcohol interlock systems at EU level
• Step by step adaptation to speeding penalties and acceptance levels to EU levels
• Speed section control in tunnels and on motorways (as opposed to spot-checks)
• Pilot study for Intelligent Speed Adaptation
• Implementation of multi-phase training for driver licensing
• Feasibility study to identify and prosecute notorious repeat offenders
• Black spot identification and treatment
• Close co-operation between the federal government, regions (Länder) and cities/ municipalities with respect to before-and-after black spot treatment studies
• Full implementation of tunnels with traffic information radio broadcast facilities
• Monitoring and control of speeds and distance keeping
• Introduction of mandatory safety audits for all road design and construction schemes
• Influencing traffic by means of Variable Message Signs on heavily trafficked motorway stretches with respect to congestion, accident and weather warnings
• Mandatory fitting of crash accident data recorders in vehicles that require high responsibility
• Financial incentives for voluntary fitting passenger cars with data recorders

Further details on Austrian Road Safety Programme 2002-2010:    .pdf (2261 KB)

Brochure "Road Infrastructure 2006":  .pdf (128 KB)

Road Safety Management Organisation

In Austria, a process has been started to decentralise ownership and operation of part of the federal road network to the regional level. Nevertheless, no regional or local road safety plans will be developed. It is planned that the federal road safety strategy will be implemented at regional level, primarily through incentives. A task force has been set up to develop the implementation phase of this decentralising process with respect to road safety. This task force consists of:

• Ministry for Transport
• Ministry for the Interior
• Austrian Road Safety Board
• Representatives from the regions
• Representatives from local municipalities

Kuratorium für Verkehrssicherheit (KfV)

The Kuratorium für Verkehrssicherheit (Austrian Road Safety Board) is a private institution engaged in accident research and accident prevention. It was founded in 1959 at the initiative of the Austrian automobile clubs and the association of the Austrian insurance companies due to the exorbitant number of traffic fatalities and injuries as a consequence of the booming mass motorisation in the 1950s. The high costs for insurers and the national economy resulting from these accidents called for action, and there was a wish to have an institution whose sole task was to elaborate appropriate, scientifically based measures for accident prevention and the enhancement of road safety.

From the beginning, KfV's work has been based on research activities focusing on traffic psychology, traffic education, traffic engineering and the communication of safety issues to the public by means of educational material and safety campaigns. KfV managers and researchers regarded it as essential to seek international cooperation in research work and to acquire knowledge about other institutions' research results. Thus, it has been an affiliate member of TRB (Transportation Research Board) since the early 1960s and joined the ITRD (International Transport Research Documentation) of OECD as soon as it came into existence.

In its first few years, there was no organised library and documentation at the KfV. Each KfV institute and the individual researchers acquired national and international literature independently. To combat this lack of a coherent information resource for the continously growing organisation, a central library and documentation centre was established by the end of the 1960s.

The KfV includes around 200 permanent staff and about 150 temporary workers employed in the course of a year at its headquarters in Vienna and the eight branch offices in the federal provinces. In 1987, the Austrian Institute for Home and Leisure Time Safety was founded as a KfV affiliate to cover accident research and  prevention in the spheres of home, leisure time and sports. In 2000, there was a major restructuring when the Institute of Technical Safety, which deals with fire, burglary and theft prevention issues was affiliated. A new association, Kuratorium fuer Schutz und Sicherheit - including the KfV, the Austrian Institute for Home and Leisure Time Safety and the Institute for Technical Safety - was founded to consolidate the research on all of the above-mentioned areas. These different fields of activities are also reflected in the holdings of the library.

Information resources

(http://www.kfv.or.at/).
The KfV's information resources contain information on all aspects of traffic safety - especially focusing on traffic psychology, traffic engineering, traffic medicine, traffic education, driver training, driver improvement, vehicle safety, safety communication and road safety legislation. Apart from published literature, the holdings include a considerable amount of information unavailable elsewhere. In addition, there is a large stock of psychological and sociological literature and some 6,000 documents relating to accident research in the spheres of home, leisure time and sports. Unique in Austria, the KfV library includes literature unavailable at the Austrian National Library or any of the Austrian university libraries. Therefore, it is accessed by some 4,500 national and international users annually, half of which are external private or public users. External users can access the KfV Library and Documentation through the Internet.

Relevant links

Austrian Federal Ministry for the Interior (Bundesministerium für Inneres) 

Austrian Federal Ministry of Transport, Innovation and Technology

Road traffic accidents in Austria in 2003

Road transport web info

Austrian Road Safety Board

Roncalli Telematics