In recent years, there has been a coordinated international response to road safety by key agencies. Perhaps most importantly, the United Nations (UN) “Decade of Action for Road Safety” 2011–2020 aims to stabilize and then reduce global road deaths by 2020 [1] in the face of increasing vehicle ownership and operation in the developing world.

The UN proclamation for the Decade of Action for Road Safety focuses on five key pillars [1]: 1.

Road safety management (e.g., monitoring and evaluation of targets);

Such international responses have, in turn, driven renewal of road safety strategies and plans of action in many countries around the world. This movement is certainly evident in Australia where there have been several recent federal and state-based initiatives that include a CRS element. On a national level, again using Australia as the example, the key one is the National Road Safety Strategy 2011–2020 [2]. Within it, the main elements are:

Road safety goals, objectives and actions: Safe roads, Safe speeds, Safe vehicles, Safe people.

Key challenges of this strategy associated with local communities include [2]:

Develop interventions that respond to the different needs and circumstances of urban, regional and remote Australia. The predominant crash types and risk factors vary between these broad areas. Fatality rates per population are significantly higher in regional and remote areas.

Therefore, it is clear, on both an international and a national level, that broad strategic approaches exist that can help companies in the minerals industry to develop CRS initiatives around their operations.

The above-mentioned national and international strategic approaches help give general impetus for minerals industry CRS initiatives. However, in themselves, they do not specify how such initiatives should be developed. The “safe systems” approach provides a valuable framework here; it is the current guiding philosophy to improve road safety in Australia and elsewhere. It includes four key aspects: road users; vehicles; speeds; and road environment (and their interactions). A basic premise is that road users will continue to make mistakes, so the road needs to be designed to accommodate human error. Also, road safety needs to consider the limitations of the human body to absorb forces during accidents [3].

This strategy’s development can be traced to European road safety, based on Vision Zero in Sweden and Sustainable Safety in the Netherlands. Vision Zero shifts the responsibility from just the road user to a shared responsibility for safety among system designers, regulators and road users. Likewise, in sustainable safety, the entire traffic system is adapted to human limitations—with a focus on prevention being better than cure [4].

Overall, the approach moved road safety away from just blaming the driver for accidents and injuries. The safe system approach recognizes that where a serious incident occurs, there has been a failure of the safe road transport system. So, error should be viewed as a consequence of a poorly designed system, not a cause [5]. The approach relies on four main inputs: legislation and enforcement, education, understanding crashes and risk, and a licensing/training process to allow admittance to the system [4].

The first example of a formal community road safety (CRS) project occurred in Sweden in the late 1970s. In Australia, CRS properly began in the 1980s [5]. As will be seen below, CRS is now a widespread and often effective approach—the success of which has been attributed to the harnessing of existing local community networks, covering all ages, environments and scenarios and empowering all of those involved in the process.

The safe systems approach to road safety has renewed the need for an informed and engaged community to adopt and apply effective road safety strategies. There has been a paradigm shift from individual drivers to safe systems. Within this thrust, community partnerships and shared responsibility are key elements [6]. A safe system approach is one where citizens demand and expect safety improvements (OECD). According to Smithson [6], it requires:

Creating an informed community;

Given that companies in the minerals industry are recognizing that their operations have an impact in the wider community, as will be seen below, there is now an increasing interest from major minerals companies in being a partner in CRS initiatives. However, there is uncertainty regarding precisely how they should actually be involved. In general terms, Bekefi [7] suggested that such involvement may be either enabling (including safety culture, standards and funding) or on the ground delivery (including raising awareness, capacity building, product development or infrastructure adaptation). For Bekefi [7], at the community level, an example of enabling would be safe driving campaigns; at the delivery level, it might include the donation of materials (e.g., retro-reflective material for school children). One of the aims of our review is to identify best practices in this area to help companies in the minerals industry to develop strategic policies.

As noted above, the “Safe Systems” approach addresses road safety issues from a broad perspective, often considering roads, speeds, vehicles, and driver behavior. The types of areas typically considered in road safety initiatives include the following [8]:

Speed behavior and enforcement;

Our research identified, for the period 1999 to 2013, 60 road and traffic safety programs; these programs were found in the academic literature, company websites, program reports and news media. The search was limited to English language sources and to online academic journal databases (e.g., Web of Science), mining and associated conference databases (OneMine, OnePetro), transportation industry and research conferences, as well as content from news media and Google. The search string included terms like “road OR traffic” and “safety OR awareness” and “community OR program”. The collection of papers was supplemented by contacting authors for additional material they may have published and by searching publication records at transportation-focused research institutes.

This review considers 25 key projects that have strong links to the minerals industry. It includes road and traffic safety management programs with both international (more than one country) and national (only one country) scope from Australia, USA, and European, Asian, African and Latin American countries. In addition, for some of the key interventions, we undertook supplementary internet searches (especially media reports) and made contact with program leaders to gain more information for inclusion in the “Case Studies” section of this article.

Following Bekefi [7], the twenty-five key projects were classified into two streams (see Figure 1): outside the fence (companies investing in community road safety, n = 12) and inside the fence (companies improve their own road safety performance, n = 13).

There were 24 issues extracted from the 12 interventions that companies used to contribute to improving “outside the fence” community road safety. Figure 2 shows the eight top issues. Safety of pedestrians, substance abuse, cyclist/motorcycles, and seatbelts were the most four common areas of focus (each with a total 4 of 12 interventions).

There were 29 issues addressed by companies during their own road/traffic safety operations. Figure 3 shows the eight top issues. Driver fitness and traffic management were ranked at the top as most common issues (each with 7 of 13 interventions) that needed to be addressed to reduce traffic accidents or injury severity. As an example, Energy Resources of Australia has the publication, Road Safety Initiatives [9], which sets the minimum requirements for undertaking a safe journey for all of their staff driving activities.

Comparing the key issues of the initiative inside the fence with those outside the fence, substance abuse, seatbelts and speeding are common areas of focus. For example, the Global Road Safety Initiative (GRSI) supported China’s Ministry of Health conducts roadside and hospital-based surveys about alcohol involvement in road crashes in Guangxi province. Traffic police randomly stop people and carry out breath tests. At the same time, hospitals checked blood-alcohol levels in all drivers admitted to hospital after a crash [10].

In addition to the wide number of road safety issues focused on, a diverse set of approaches and media are used for CRS education and awareness campaigns. According to Murray et al. [11] and Murray and Watson [12], these approaches typically include:

Marketing programs;

Added to this list, according to Lewis et al. [13], two other important approaches are the use of advertising and educational awareness programs. As Davis and Quimby [5] note, often the most effective programs are those that use a combination of approaches/media.

There are a number of general lessons that can be learnt from these three case studies:

A common method that governments employ to engage with local communities is development of road safety groups that include a range of local stakeholders [21]. Minerals industry companies could be an active participant in this process, too. In so doing, important and “real” or meaningful hazards can become the focus. As seen in the case studies above, strategies are sustainable when they create an informed community, one that has a sense of ownership of programs and that causes local resources to be mobilized to achieve road safety. Also, road safety activities are integrated across a community—ensuring mutually supportive activities. Engaging and partnering with residents and organization in local communities in relation to road safety is also integral to implementing a “safe systems” approach [6].

Another method supported by these strategies is for agencies and minerals companies to partner in local road safety activities, building on established road regulations and laws. This effort might involve agencies/organizations:

Supplementing and supporting existing programs that are successful;

Programs that promote community engagement on road safety strategies can be evaluated in terms of level of engagement and opportunity for local community members and other stakeholders to become involved in effectively addressing road safety needs and issues. Such measures can revitalize existing community road safety groups. A difficulty with this method of evaluation is that there are many different stakeholders with different expectations and aims. Reductions in crashes might be the most clear-cut indicator, but it can be problematic due to the difficulty in separating the influence of different initiatives and factors. One other way to measure success is through social capital, for example, the growth in engagement, trust, and active community participation [6].

An innovative approach employing road safety “ambassadors” was instituted by Montero et al. [22]. The ambassadors proved to be very useful in training workers about road safety in industrial and community settings. This “train the trainer” strategy has proven to be effective in both Victoria, Australia and Indonesia. It provides a locally informed and locally relevant response to road safety issues. This approach therefore suggests a peer role model, a community advocate and a mentor.

Occupational road safety programs by industry often involve strategies that may initially focus on road safety of their own personnel (e.g., fleet safety) but then can be extended to encompass CRS.

As an example, Murray et al. [11] outline how to develop effective Occupational Road Safety Programs. They lament that there are few recent, published and well-evaluated case studies of organizations who have successfully managed their occupational road safety [11].

Murray and Watson [12] recommend that organizations wishing to extend their fleet safety initiatives into community road safety ones need to:

Build in road safety as part of their community engagement strategy;

They state that it is difficult to evaluate safety success directly (due to the number of different factors in play), but such initiatives may have benefits for community building, brand development and PR/marketing [12].

Within mine sites, techniques to improve safety include road design guidelines, road safety audits, proximity detection technologies, fatigue management, and separation of vehicles/pedestrians [3]. According to Vagaja [3], it is important that organizations take a proactive approach aimed at establishing themselves as critical stakeholders for the management of affected road networks. Within a safe systems framework, such measures include:

Organizations doing their own road safety assessments (e.g., of routes to be frequently used);

Cairney [23,24,25] undertook a comprehensive review of the current status of community road safety in Australia and New Zealand. The key issues emerging were:

Recognition of community road safety as part of good practice road safety;

In the UK, a major review of successful CRS was undertaken in the early 2000s. For Davis and Quimby [5], the key characteristics of community safety education include that it:

Relies critically in the involvement of the community—they have the right to be fully informed about road safety;

Davis and Quimby [5] argue that there is great merit from partnering with media, local newspapers, TV, radio and new media to bring visibility and improve communication.