Lessons to be Learned from Transportation Engineering Failures

The Transportation sector is unusual in engineering in that several thousand people are killed or seriously injured each year in New Zealand, and yet it doesn't tend to get the same in-depth investigations that other sectors of engineering face when they have casualties. At the same time, some forms of active transport can actually be beneficial to people's health.

In the third of a series of Engineering NZ webinars on lessons to be learned from engineering failures, TGNZ National Cm'tee members Jeanette Ward, Glen Koorey and Bridget Burdett looked at road safety and how we currently measure that (e.g. objectives of fewer deaths/injuries/crashes), the potential issues with what we measure vs other possible objectives (e.g. health, environment, economic “efficiency”), and the associated “systemic” industry processes/constraints we have for making safety improvements happen (or not).

The webinar presentation is here and you can also watch the video.