Launch date of the SIG / History: The transportation safety Special Interest Group (SIG) grew from two special sessions at the fifth WCTR in Yokohama in 1989.  The SIG has organized multiple sessions on safety at every WCTR conference since the sixth WCTR in Lyon, France in 1992.
Objectives:  The analysis of transportation safety is multi-disciplinary. Economists, psychologists, physicians, mechanical engineers, civil engineers, lawyers and other disciplines have contributed to the literature. Our SIG was formed to ensure that the area of safety research is promoted within WCTRS and also that the rather disparate nature of the different lines of research are brought together under one banner at the World Conferences.  Currently the SIG has confined itself to organizing sessions at the World Conferences.

Topics of interest to the SIG include: how safe is safe enough?, user safety perceptions and psychological reactions, crash statistics, the acceptability of crash risks, the analysis of crash locations, policy options, the role of insurance and liability, modal safety performance and safety measurement, international comparisons, policy and program evaluation, valuation of statistical life saved, crash costs, evaluation of emergency response, and safety management evaluation. The only real exclusion is consideration of “hard” engineering such as design of automatic train control, construction of crash barriers and the like, although we do welcome discussion of the economic effectiveness of such devices.

Major Accomplishments:  The safety track organized by the SIG has grown to be one of the largest areas for paper submissions at the WCTR.  We have organized at least six sessions at every WCTR since Lyon in 1992.  For the 11th WCTR in Berkeley, USA in 2007, we received 62 initial abstracts, and this resulted in 40 full papers being accepted and ultimately 33 papers were presented in eight sessions dealing with all aspects of safety.   The Traffic Safety Center at the University of California-Berkeley sent a reporter and photographer to the sessions, and their write up of the events and the papers presented was in their newsletter and on their web site:
http://www.tsc.berkeley.edu/newsletter/fall2007/wctr.html
The SIG puts great emphasis on giving close personal attention to people who submit abstracts to the safety track.  Consequently, we encourage many people to come to the WCTR, and by working closely with presenters we have never experienced any canceled or poorly attended sessions.

Membership:  The SIG is aimed at: government officials, industry representatives, medical personnel, economists, psychologists, and policy oriented engineers. In general we do not focus on “hard engineering” such as component design and highway geometry. Such researchers are well served by other professional forums.  There is no fee for joining the SIG, but please registering your interest with the contact information shown below to ensure that you receive notifications of calls for papers, and information on the sessions organized by the SIG.

Contact:  The SIG is co-chaired by Professors Paul Jovanis, a civil engineer at the Pennsylvania State University, and Ian Savage, an economist at Northwestern University.
All correspondence is dealt with by Professor Savage:

Professor Ian Savage
Department of Economics
Northwestern University
2001 Sheridan Road
Evanston, IL 60208, USA
Tel: +1-847-491-8241
Fax: +1-847-491-7001
e-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it