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Availability bias in road safety systematic reviews and its impact on the meta-analysis findings
Full text linkJiří Ambros, Rune Elvik,Availability bias in road safety systematic reviews and its impact on the meta-analysis findings, Accident Analysis & Prevention, Volume 211, 2025, 107905, ISSN 0001-4575, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2024.107905.Meta-analyses, which present the best source of information on the effectiveness of interventions, are influenced by several biases. One category relates to the convenience of selective inclusion of those primary studies, which are more easily available than others. This availability bias includes bias from excluding the grey literature, bias from excluding non-English literature, and bias from excluding older studies. Existing studies are not conclusive about the impacts of this bias; in addition, none of them focus on road safety meta-analyses. To fill this gap, the present paper consisted of two studies: (1) exploring the presence of availability bias in road safety meta-analyses, and (2) demonstrating the impact of availability bias in several example meta-analyses. Based on an analysis of 80 existing meta-analyses, the first study concluded that compared to the medicine meta-analyses, the road safety meta-analyses use a longer time range, are more often restricted in terms of language, and less often involve the grey literature. The second study utilized selected unrestricted data samples to demonstrate the impact of availability bias in seven meta-analyses. The differences in intervention effectiveness in terms of crash frequency changes between unrestricted and restricted scenarios were identified. This shows that the search restrictions clearly lead to availability bias, which influences the differences in meta-analysis results.Availability bias in road safety systematic reviews and its impact on the meta-analysis findingsacceptedVersio
Attitudes Towards E-scooter Safety – A Survey in Five Countries
Full text linkDrimlová, E., Šucha, M., Rečka, K., Haworth, N., Fyhri, A., Wallgren, P., Silverans, P., & Slootmans, F. (2024). Attitudes Towards E-scooter Safety - A Survey in Five Countries. Transactions on Transport Sciences, 15(3), 24-36. doi: 10.5507/tots.2024.009E-scooters are quite popular among young people in big cities. Their use seems to be a well-studied phenomenon. This study concentrates on the risky behaviour of e-scooter riders and on e-scooter riders' and non-riders' attitudes towards risky e-scooter riding. The goals were to describe these attitudes and to describe the most common types of risky e-scooter behaviours in five participating countries. An online questionnaire was developed and distributed in Australia, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Sweden, and Norway from June to September 2020. Respondents were recruited through sponsored Facebook ads and participant sharing (snowball sampling). The riders in the countries considered in this study tend to perceive e-scooters as being quite safe. The majority of them even think e-scooters pose no danger to other road users. On the other hand, the non-riders believe riding an e-scooter is rather unsafe, with the exception of Belgium, where the respondents tend to think that it is very unsafe. When risky behaviour is considered, the non-riders tend to report more risky behaviour than e-scooter riders, even though fact-based observable behaviour, e.g. helmet use, should in principle be the same across both groups. In addition, as the existing literature shows, evidence suggests that young riders and male riders engage in more risky riding behaviours in comparison to older and female riders. This phenomenon should be addressed by effective preventive programmers and campaigns. The data shows that a greater frequency of riding predicted more risky riding behaviours. Although there are some differences between the samples under study, these findings can inspire police officers to promote e-scooter safety behaviour.publishedVersio
Back to the future: Advancing more sustainable tourism through domestic summer holidaying after the COVID-19 pandemic
Full text linkHealth hazards, border restrictions, insurance limitations, travel uncertainties, and other disruptions following the COVID-19 pandemic reduced international travel in the summer of 2021. The sudden travel changes created a unique opportunity to investigate potentials for reshaping future holidaying. The article’s objective is to investigate how experiences of domestic summer holidaying might have influenced attitudes towards future holiday travel. It is based on exploratory survey conducted among Oslo region inhabitants. A structural equation modelling analytical framework revealed two main holidaying orientations, environmentally friendly and international vacationist, characterised by five attitude dimensions, and associated with weaker and stronger inclinations towards future long-distance international travel, respectively. The sharply contrasting attitudes underpinning these orientations were based on experiences of ‘forced’ domestic holidaying shaping future travel intentions with implications for more sustainable tourism. The pandemic prompted some people to go ‘back to the future’ and intend to resume ‘old’ (traditional) summer holidaying practices: mainly short-distance domestic trips with reduced carbon footprint and greater emphasis on social bonds. In conclusion, the study contributes to theory development through exploring environmental consciousness and habit discontinuities, as well as time and distance perceptions related to holiday travel. Lastly, the implications of the findings are presented.Back to the future: Advancing more sustainable tourism through domestic summer holidaying after the COVID-19 pandemicpublishedVersio
Cost-Benefit Appraisal of Universal Design in Public Transport and Walking/Cycling Infrastructure
Full text linkFearnley, N., Veisten, K. 2024. Cost-Benefit Appraisal of Universal Design in Public Transport and Walking/Cycling Infrastructure in Universal Design 2024: Shaping a Sustainable, Equitable and Resilient Future for All. K.S. Fuglerud et al. (Eds.), Vol. 320, 304-313.Public budgets are limited and priorities must be made between competing projects. Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is the standard tool to assess projects and prioritise between them, as is done, e.g., in national transport plans. Universal design (UD) is typically a legal requirement in new investments and their benefits and contribution in CBA have usually not received much attention. Therefore, there is a risk that benefits are underestimated in projects that include UD elements and that these projects are subsequently ranked lower than what they ought to according to CBA performance. In this paper, we develop a user-friendly methodology for CBA of UD projects in public transport and walk/cycle infrastructure which aligns with national handbooks and guidelines for project appraisal. It contains five core elements: 1. User benefit. User benefit stems from valuation studies and are summarized and discounted over an assessment period, which in Norway is 40 years. This includes annual real price adjustments and the use of a discount rate according to guidelines. 2. Non-user effects. The degree to which UD projects affect other travellers, this (dis)benefit is accounted for. 3. Costs. Budget costs include investment and possible reinvestment at the end of economic life and annual operation and maintenance costs. These are summarized and discounted over the analysis period. Residual value after 40 years is subtracted. 4. Demand. Increases in walking and cycling have health benefits. Moreover, demand diverted from motorized transport and car to public transport, walking and cycling will affect external costs of road congestion, emissions, and accidents. 5. Shadow prices. According to Norwegian practice, the use of public funds has an inefficiency cost. Therefore, we add a shadow price on money from the public purse. With worked examples, we demonstrate that UD projects in transport are indeed available for CBA appraisal. What is more, they compete surprisingly well with alternative uses of public budgets. In fact, UD projects outperform most other transport projects in Norway when considering their cost-benefit performance. Money spent on UD gives more welfare back to society than most other uses within the transport sector. This means that UD need not only be a legal requirement in new installations. UD can also compete with, and be prioritized over, other transport investments and projects.Cost-Benefit Appraisal of Universal Design in Public Transport and Walking/Cycling InfrastructureacceptedVersio
A comprehensive approach to evaluation of road safety policy
Full text linkElvik, R. (2024). A comprehensive approach to evaluation of road safety policy. Traffic Safety Research, 6, e000051. https://doi.org/10.55329/lksd3366This paper outlines a comprehensive approach to the evaluation of road safety policy. An evaluation of road safety policy aims to estimate its effect on the number of traffic fatalities or the number of injured road users. The following main stages of such a study are identified: (1) Analysis of long-term trends for the purpose of developing hypotheses about the effects of road safety policy; (2) Identification of variables describing road safety policy; (3) Identification of confounding variables; (4) Exploratory analysis of statistical models; (5) Comparative analysis of statistical models; (6) Estimation of policy effect and its uncertainty. The approach is illustrated using data for Sweden for 1981–2018. Four variables describing road safety policy were assessed. Only one of them, the length of motorways and 2+1 roads, had a consistent statistical relationship to the number of fatalities. Three models for statistical analysis were compared: a negative binomial regression model, a multivariate ARIMA time-series model, and a least squares linear regression model. The time-series model was clearly the best of the models in terms of various criteria for model quality. According to this model, the number of fatalities in 2018 was 27.6% lower than it would have been without the contribution of the policy variable. It is likely that this estimate is too low. Only a single variable was used as an indicator of road safety policy. The trend term (year count) probably captures part of road safety policy, like the effects of safer cars associated with the renewal of the car fleet. The analyses show that road safety policy in Sweden, as indicated by motorway length, has become more effective after the adoption of Vision Zero than it was before the adoption of Vision Zero. In general, the history of road safety policy cannot be reconstructed in sufficient detail to support an evaluation of which elements of it have been more or less effective. It is, accordingly, not possible to identify any specific set of road safety measures that should be given higher priority in order to make road safety policy more effective.A comprehensive approach to evaluation of road safety policypublishedVersio
Market access and seaport efficiency: the case of container handling in Norway
Full text linkOpen Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Comprehensive studies on the impact of market access on port efficiency are scarce, and the problem that market access indicators are potentially endogenous lacks treatment in maritime economics. This paper offers both theoretical and empirical advances to fill these research gaps. First, it pioneers in the use of Stochastic semi-Nonparametric Envelopment of Z variables Data for measuring port efficiency, and further develops the methodology for panel data and proposes an instrumental variable extension for dealing with endogenous market access indicators. Second, it advances the empirical port literature by developing a unique panel dataset on Norwegian container ports encompassing a comprehensive set of foreland and hinterland connectivity measures. Our comprehensive assessment suggests that the role of market access in determining port efficiency is uncertain.Market access and seaport efficiency: the case of container handling in NorwaypublishedVersio
The contribution of research and knowledge accumulation in the development of the Norwegian battery electric vehicle market
Full text linkErik Figenbaum, The contribution of research and knowledge accumulation in the development of the Norwegian battery electric vehicle market, Transportation Research Procedia, Volume 72, 2023, Pages 4127-4134, ISSN 2352-1465, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trpro.2023.11.363.This paper investigates the role of research and knowledge building in developing the world's leading BEV market in Norway 1990-2020. Review of research articles/reports and other documents revealed that Politicians in the early years had little research-based knowledge to build decisions on. The Ministry of Transport therefore financed basic research to evaluate BEVs potential. Incentives suggested by lobbyist, were introduced at negligible cost to support testing/industrialization towards 2000 and 2010, without knowing their far-reaching future consequences. Norwegian industrialization failed by 2010. The policies started working after 2010 when OEM BEVs came. Researcher have after 2010 supported political decisions with market models and by analyzing user needs and policy effects. The early decisions should have been supported by research-based knowledge and regular policy reviews.The contribution of research and knowledge accumulation in the development of the Norwegian battery electric vehicle marketpublishedVersio
Using the future wheel methodology to assess the impact of open science in the transport sector
Full text linkNielsen, A.F., Michelmann, J., Akac, A. et al. Using the future wheel methodology to assess the impact of open science in the transport sector. Sci Rep 13, 6000 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-33102-5Open Science enhances information sharing and makes scientific results of transport research more transparent and accessible at all levels and to everyone allowing integrity and reproducibility. However, what future impacts will Open Science have on the societal, environmental and economic development within the transport sector? Using the Future Wheel methodology, we conducted a workshop with transport experts from both industry and academia to answer this question. The main findings of this study point in the direction of previous studies in other fields, in terms of increased innovation, increased efficiency, economic savings, more equality, and increased participation of citizens. In addition, we found several potential transport specific impacts: lower emission, faster travel times, improved traffic safety, increased awareness for transport policies, artificial intelligence improving mobility services. Several potential negative outcomes of Open Science were also identified by the expert group: job loss, new types of risks, increased cost, increased conflicts, time delays, increased inequality and increased energy consumption. If we know the negative outcomes it is much easier to put in place strategies that are sustainable for a broader stakeholder group, which also increase the probability of taking advantage of all the positive impacts of Open Science.publishedVersio
The impacts of automated urban delivery and consolidation
Full text linkBin Hu, Wolfgang Ponweiser, Apostolos Ziakopoulos, Julia Roussou, Amna Chaudhry, Maria Oikonomou, Sarah Gebhard, Rins de Zwart, Charles Goldenbeldd Govert Schermers, Wendy Weijermars, Knut Veisten, Knut J.L. Hartveit, Mark Brackstone, Pete Thomas, George Yannis, The impacts of automated urban delivery and consolidation, Transportation Research Procedia, Volume 72, 2023, Pages 2542-2549, ISSN 2352-1465, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trpro.2023.11.766.Automation in urban freight transport is an important milestone for city logistics, but it is challenging due to the complex traffic situations. While the parcel volume is soaring due to the popularity of e-commerce – and especially accelerated by COVID, cities are thinking about the future delivery system. Automation and consolidation are expected to bring disruptive changes to the system we know today. The aim of the present paper is to provide an insight in the impact assessment method used and the results related to parcel delivery in Vienna. By applying analytical methods, we show which impacts at what magnitude we may expect from the changes brought by automation in freight transport. We consider the direct impacts consisting of fleet size, freight mileage and fleet operation costs, as well as the wider impacts consisting of parking space, public health and road safety.The impacts of automated urban delivery and consolidationpublishedVersio
Reference points in sequential bargaining: theory and experiment
Full text linkBrekke, K.A., Ciccone, A., Heggedal, T.-R. and Helland, L. (2024), Reference points in sequential bargaining: theory and experiment. Scand. J. of Economics. 126(2), 254-288. https://doi.org/10.1111/sjoe.12552We introduce loss aversion in an infinite-horizon, alternating-offers model. When outside options serve as reference points, the equilibrium of our model follows that of the standard Rubinstein bargaining model, i.e., outside options do not affect the equilibrium unless they are binding. However, when reference points are given by the resources players contribute to the pie, the bargaining outcome changes such that a player's share increases in her contribution. We test our model's predictions in the laboratory. As predicted, only binding outside options impact the division of the pie. Data also show that contributions matter for bargaining outcomes when they are activated as reference points, but not quite as predicted by our theory. Proposers gain a higher share of the pie only when they have contributed a higher share than the opponent has.Reference points in sequential bargaining: theory and experimentacceptedVersio