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A free website to help road safety practitioners evaluate their education, training and publicity activities was launched today by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents and the Department for Transport.

At the heart of the Road Safety Evaluation website is E-valu-it - an interactive tool that helps practitioners define exactly what they are doing and why, allows them to design and carry out their evaluation, and promotes the publication and sharing of results.

The site – at www.roadsafetyevaluation.com - also includes background information and guidance about evaluation.

It was developed after it was found that while evaluation of road safety engineering was already an established discipline, road safety practitioners faced difficulties in evaluating their education, training and publicity (ETP) activities.

Road Safety Minister Mike Penning said:

“In the current economic climate everyone wants to make sure they are spending taxpayers’ money in the most effective way. To do that it is vital organisations can accurately evaluate all activities - whether they are road engineering measures or education campaigns.

“This new website will allow local authorities to assess the value of education, training and publicity activities, which will in turn help them to design high quality schemes and target them where they will have the most impact. I am delighted that we have been able to work with RoSPA to develop this invaluable tool and I hope it will be widely used by local road safety practitioners.”

Kevin Clinton, RoSPA’s head of road safety, said:

“It is recognised that it is much harder to evaluate road safety ETP than road safety engineering. But it is more important than ever that we are able to demonstrate the effectiveness of what we do.

“The sharing of such information is also important - road safety practitioners have much to learn from each other about interventions that have worked and also those that have been less successful.”

E-valu-it helps practitioners plan, carry out and report the results of ETP evaluations. The system produces bespoke recommendations for the type of evaluation that could be conducted based on the answers given to a series of questions. It can be used for interventions that are planned, in progress or have already taken place.

A major strength of the system is that it transfers all the generated results into an evaluation report template. Users can then add to the template throughout their evaluation, producing a professional report at the end of the process.

To enable knowledge to be shared and good work promoted, E-valu-it encourages users to publish their final reports on www.roadsafetyevaluation.com, as well as on the Road Safety Knowledge Centre website and their own organisations’ websites.

Twelve regional workshops, involving the DfT, RoSPA and local authorities across Britain, are being held as part of the website’s development. Road Safety Evaluation is also being supported by 12 regional champions who can explain to potential users the benefits of using E-valu-it.

The website is free to use, and there is no limit on the number of people who can sign up from any one organisation.

Road safety practitioners wanting more information about using the website and E-valu-it should contact Lindsey Simkins, RoSPA’s road safety research and evaluation officer, on lsimkins@rospa.com.

Notes to Editors

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