Paving the Way to a Safety Culture: Introducing a Hierarchical Feedback-Based Framework

After six consecutive years of declining motor vehicle crash-related fatalities, their number increased by 3.3 % in 2012, from 32,479 fatalities in 2011 to 33,561 in 2012 (USDOT NHTSA 2013). The number of traffic-related injuries saw a similar increase from 2.22 million in 2011 to 2.36 million in 2012; additionally, there was a 3.1 % increase in the total number of police-reported traffic crashes between 2011 and 2012. High-risk behavior and high-speed mobility combine to create this externality of the automobile industry (Williams and Haworth 2007). To make matters worse, when individuals are faced with highly familiar activities such as driving, research shows that they tend to underestimate the possibility of a negative outcome (Douglas 1985).