To research the effects of vehicle lane changing on freeway capacity and road safety

John aimed to research the effects of vehicle lane changing on freeway capacity and road safety which involved meetings with a wide range of road safety professionals from nine countries: France, Norway, Sweden, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Greece, and Israel. The findings of his report suggest crashes will continue to rise without a response that effectively manages the underlying cause for where and when crashes occur. John identified many important pieces of the puzzle, and these are contained in the full report. Urban motorways are the “heavy lifters” of road transport as they typically comprise about 7% of the lane kilometres yet carry up to 40% of the travel in urban areas. Urban motorway crashes comprise around 15% of urban Fatal and Serious Injury (FSI) crashes. Hence this is a significant problem to investigate, and findings suggest there are learnings applicable to crashes on the broader road network. Importantly the learnings from this study have wider application: wherever these traffic conditions occur for at least some part of the day on rural freeways or divided highways, the crash risk will rise. Events of Exposure often happen within fractions of seconds and are measurable providing researchers with a proper definition of relationships between exposure and risk. This re-establishes the connection between the basic concepts of accident research and probability theory. For many years road safety programs have primarily focused efforts and resources on treating the more serious crashes only, by reducing their impacts. It has become clear during this study that all motorway crashes are potentially dangerous, thus the potential for all crashes must be managed aged because the mechanisms involved in crash causation come without warning often giving drivers little or no reaction time. It becomes apparent that all motorway crashes are potentially dangerous, and efforts must focus on reducing their numbers. Even a minor crash on an urban motorway has the potential to cause widespread congestion and economic loss, often shutting down major parts of a capital city. During these events, traffic is often diverted onto secondary roads that are statistically four to five times more dangerous for fatality crashes per kilometre travelled, and thus avoiding all motorway crashes by managing their potential should be seen as important as managing traffic on the road network. [See full report for footnotes for above]