Evaluation of a Public Technology-Based Traffic Enforcement Program

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The study evaluates the use of volunteers to detect traffic violations as a supporting tool of police enforcement. The paper is well written and easy to understand. The subject matter is worthy, the topic has nobility. However, the depth of analysis is very shallow. Some of my detailed comments are listed below:

The study addresses three research questions including volunteers’ level of engagement, process outcomes and violation types with differences from traditional police enforcement i.e. program outcomes. First two questions are satisfactorily described with general statistics. However, in response to the third question, some extended analysis is needed particularly on the second part.

There is nothing about the demographic characteristics of the volunteers including education, training, experience etc.? (Please add in the data section) There might have some demographic attributes that significantly affects the performance of the volunteer i.e. activeness, reporting behaviour etc. Authors should do some statistical analysis to draw a relationship between the demographic attributes and volunteer performance and find out the significant factors. That will give a strong basis of the overall program evaluation. Otherwise, it would be impossible to draw a conclusion and recommendation might be biased or just hypothetical.

There is a good discussion and conclusion in the paper. However, as the paper is based on the evaluation of a program, the authors should draw a firm conclusion on whether the process is effective or not, do they recommend it for further application or not as a complementary tool to police enforcement. Apparently, the system is very inefficient in terms of performance of volunteer (inactive volunteer, false cases), success case rate (1/3 immediately rejected, another 40% later steps of initial screening and only 4.3% are issued citation), time and resource efficiency (though there is no economic analysis). The authors should provide some clear messages to the policymaker (with consideration of the previous point). Some policy recommendations also could be provided to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the program, if it is recommended.

What is the impact of this program e.g., improvement of the level of enforcement, changing behaviour, change of violation rate etc.? That should be a part of the evaluation of a program.

For effective program design, evaluation and recommendation, there is also needed to carry out a stakeholder analysis and recommendations should be based on this analysis. This paper at least should highlight these issues as a limitation and recommend further research direction.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Interesting paper. In the reviewed paper, the Authors presented the Israeli Road Guards program, a new and unique type of traffic enforcement, which enables simple technology-based citizens enforcement of traffic violations and increases public accountability. The Authors concluded that regarding violation types, the most common are lane deviations, red-light running, and driving on the road shoulders. A comparison of the violation types to those captured by police enforcement shows a notable difference. These are most likely due to the manner each enforcement is performed. In my opinion, the paper can be published, after taking into account the following remarks:

• before paper publishing, the paper text must be improved by a native speaker,
• in the "Keywords" section, the Authors should add the " the Israeli Road Guards program", because the role of this program in the paper is significant,
• on Figure 1: what does it mean the "PTD review "? It should be explained,
• the names of the axis "y" on figure 4 and figure 5 are very small and should be write a bigger letter (in order to be visible for readers),
• the article should expand the literature review of the subject. Unfortunately, the Authors did not describe the groups of possibilities to improve road safety. Such as opportunities to improve transport infrastructure and design safe intersections. Roundabouts are usually considered as a very safe intersections. Here Authors should refer to the latest work in this area, e.g. "Roundabout entry capacity calculation-A case study based on roundabouts in Tokyo, Japan, and Tokyo surroundings", doi 10.3390/su12041533; "Estimation of Passenger Car Equivalents for Two-Lane and Turbo Roundabouts Using AIMSUN", doi 10.3389/fbuil.2020.00086; "Safety Evaluation of Flower Roundabout Considering Autonomous Vehicles Operation", doi.org/10.3390/su131810120. Another group of possibilities to improve road safety in the transport network is the introduction of traffic calming elements. Another issue is supervision and prevention, etc. The description and characteristics of groups of possibilities to improve road safety in the transport network should be added to the article. One short paragraph will be enough,
• the section "Discussion and conclusions" should be divided into "Discussion" separately and "Conclusions" separately. In each of these sections should be contained appropriate content. Moreover, the conclusions section should contained more detailed conclusions than now.
•  

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper has improved a bit, particularly the conclusion and discussion. However, I was expecting something more on the following issues:

• Violation types differ from traditional police enforcement
• Factors affect the performance of the volunteer and
• Stakeholder analysis and recommendations

Unfortunately, all those points are referred to the study limitations in the discussion section. Other points are addressed quite satisfactorily.

Authors could be requested for a second revision to address those points more elaborately.

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for addressing these points, and we would like to clarify and refer to them.

The violation types reported by the volunteers differ substantially from those generated by the police. In the current version we added an evaluation of the quality of these citations in terms of their association with higher crash risks. Although the literature on this topic is quite limited, we added few relevant references and referred to two studies that quantify the association of violation types with increased crash risks. The results, reported in the revised Table 2 and the accompanying text, show that the vast majority of volunteer citations are for the violations associated with the highest risk levels. The fractions are substantially lower for police citations. 

Beyond this, we agree that more research on these points would be interesting and useful. However, the available data does not support their in-depth analysis due to privacy and lack of access to relevant items. For the violation type data, they are held by the Police, which is not willing to share further details beyond the summary statistics presented in the paper. For volunteer records, the program team does not store any socio-demographic or other personal information about them. The only personal information collected are National ID numbers, which in any case cannot be shared legally. Within the program, lists of these are sent to the Police that confirms that the volunteers are eligible for participation, but do not provide the relevant personal data (such as age, gender, or traffic records). This is the reason why these issues are listed as limitations in the discussion section, which was extended, as well as the conclusions section, to provide a more detailed outline. We also further clarified the recommendations from the analysis conducted.

We believe that regardless these limitations, this manuscript, which to the best of our knowledge provides a first evaluation of a public-based enforcements, highlights the contribution to the traditional enforcement, and to a sustainable and safe transportation system.