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sustainability
Article
Evaluation of a Public Technology-Based Traffic
Enforcement Program
Gila Albert 1, *, Dimitry Bukchin 1and Tomer Toledo 2
Citation: Albert, G.; Bukchin, D.;
Toledo, T. Evaluation of a Public
Technology-Based Traffic
Enforcement Program. Sustainability
2021,13, 11966. https://doi.org/
10.3390/su132111966
Academic Editors: Gianfranco
Fancello and Patrizia Serra
Received: 20 August 2021
Accepted: 26 October 2021
Published: 29 October 2021
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1HIT—Holon Institute of Technology, Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Technology Management,
52 Golomb St., Holon 58102, Israel; dima.writeme@gmail.com
2Technion—Israel Institute of Technology, Transportation Research Institute, Haifa 32000, Israel;
toledo@technion.ac.il
*Correspondence: gilaa@hit.ac.il; Tel./Fax: +972-3-5026746
Abstract:
While police enforcement is a well-known means of reducing traffic violations, it is also
recognized that other agents should be involved in creating sustainable deterrence. This paper de-
scribes and evaluates the Israeli Road Guards program, a new and unique type of traffic enforcement,
which enables simple technology-based enforcement of traffic violations by citizens. In its 24 months
of operation, more than 3400 volunteers who submitted over 64,000 violation reports were involved
in this program. Each report went through a rigorous evaluation process. More than 80% of the
submitted reports were rejected in the various stages of the procedure. In 13.7% of the cases a notice
letter was sent, and in 4.3% of cases (reflecting the most severe offenses) a citation was issued by
the police. The monthly rate of report submission by the volunteers was at its highest initially, then
decreased and stabilized after about six months at 1.4 reports per month. The proportion of active
volunteers also decreased over time to a level of 0.26 at the end of the study period. The violation
types reported within the program differed substantially from those captured by police enforcement.
These differences are likely due to the manner in which each mode of enforcement was performed.
The most common violations reported by volunteers were lane deviations, red light running and
driving on the roads’ shoulders, which are easily documented by means of video recordings. They
are also associated with higher crash risks. Thus, the results show that such public technology-based
traffic enforcement, which can be carried out during regular daily driving and does not require
anyone to make extra trips, may efficiently complement traditional police enforcement.
Keywords:
enforcement; policy; reports; safety; traffic violations; the Israeli Road Guards pro-
gram; volunteers
1. Introduction
Road safety is a major concern in safeguarding human life. Road crashes impact
individuals, communities and countries. Therefore, improved road safety is essential to
sustainable development. A broad range of measures to increase road safety are available.
These differ in the social, environmental and economic resources that they use and their
related costs and potential benefits. Some examples include improvements to infrastructure
design, traffic control, motor vehicles, use of technological devices, influencing road users’
behavior though technology, education and media campaigns [1–8].
Among these measures, police enforcement is an important means of improving road
safety. It aims to deter road users from non-compliance with traffic rules and to prevent
risky behaviors and situations [
9
–
13
]. Furthermore, traffic violations are repeatedly raised
as an important concern of the public. This perception is prominent in the context of
offenses such as drunk driving, excessive speeding and running a red light, which may
cause serious injury to people or damage to vehicles and/or infrastructure [
9
,
14
]. Traffic en-
forcement enables police agencies to be responsive to these community priorities. However,
Sustainability 2021,13, 11966. https://doi.org/10.3390/su132111966 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability
Sustainability 2021,13, 11966 2 of 13
at the same time, as traffic citations generate revenue for municipal and state govern-
ments, the motivation for police enforcement may be perceived with suspicion
[10,15,16]
.
Consequently, it is essential to balance the promotion of road safety with maintaining
the public’s trust, which depends on the enforcement intensity and the types of citations
issued [14,17–19].
While traditional enforcement is mainly sanctioned by the police, it is well recognized
that a wide range of agents such as individuals, private entities and the community should
be involved in the process to facilitate efficient enforcement [
20
–
24
]. Such collaboration
may increase police accountability [
25
]. However, when many agents are involved, there is
also a substantial risk that the public will not clearly understand these agents’ roles and
responsibilities [26].
Technological advancements play an important role in enforcement; one way in which
they do this is by capturing aggressive driving and violation events such as speeding and
running a red light [
27
,
28
]. Simple, cheap and widespread technologies may enable a
new type of enforcement by the public, which can also be deployed for monitoring and
deterring traffic violations.
The Community Speedwatch (CSW) program has operated throughout the UK since
2012 in response to public calls for action against speeding. Local volunteers monitor
vehicle speeds using hand-held speed measurement devices that they purchase themselves.
The organization and coordination with the local police of all CSW activity is done via a
dedicated website. Volunteers are trained and instructed by the police, who also handle
the records of speeding vehicles. Offenders receive a police warning letter. A list of repeat
offenders is generated. These may receive further attention, such as a visit from the police
team. Yet, the violation records do not allow for legal prosecution of drivers, and the
program does not monitor other violation types [25].
The Delhi India traffic police allow the public to post photos and videos of traffic
violators and hazards, e.g., unauthorized parking and faulty traffic signals, on social media
(Facebook, WhatsApp). The posts are monitored by a dedicated team of 25 police officers.
If relevant, the violations are confirmed by patrolling police on-site. During six months in
2014, over 85,000 reports were recorded through WhatsApp alone. The format has been
adopted by several other Indian cities [
29
,
30
]. Similarly, in Singapore [
31
], citizens can
report traffic violations, as well as other offenses, via the police website. They are required
to provide image or video proof. A major disadvantage of this reporting approach is the
difficulty of validating the images posted, which can be relatively easily manipulated.
Therefore, only violations that can be confirmed by the police are further considered.
Moreover, if the violation is confirmed by the police, the reporting citizen is likely to be
summoned to testify, which may deter people from reporting violations.
Such programs of public traffic enforcement have the potential to be broadly imple-
mented but need further improvements. This paper describes and evaluates the Israeli
Road Guards program, which aims to enable technology-based public enforcement of
traffic violations. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to report on
the outputs of this new type of traffic enforcement. The analysis presented addresses the
characteristics of the process and its outputs. Thus, it evaluates the program’s potential
usefulness. Specifically, it focuses on assessing citation and notice letter outputs, violation
types, volunteers’ behaviors and the program’s sustainability over time.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows: in the next section, the Road Guards
program is described and the framework for the process of report evaluation is set out.
Then, data, methods and the research questions are presented. Next, the results are
described, followed by a discussion of the main results and their policy implications. Finally,
conclusions from the study, its limitations and avenues for further research are outlined.
2. The Road Guards Program
The Road Guards program is operated for the Israeli National Road Safety Authority
(NRSA) by a non-profit organization called “Safe Lane” in cooperation with the Police
Sustainability 2021,13, 11966 3 of 13
Traffic Department (PTD). Its main objective is to increase the deterrence from committing
traffic violations through civilian enforcement. The program makes use of a specifically
tailored smartphone app, which records video clips of violations. Severe traffic violations
that are recorded by the program’s volunteers are transferred to the PTD for further
consideration. The program was launched in 2016.
Individuals who wish to volunteer need to meet screening criteria: they must be
aged 30 years or older and have no record of severe traffic offenses within the last five
years. Priority is given based on locations of residence, to generate a more uniform spatial
distribution. Those that pass the screening process receive brief training on using the
technology. The volunteers install the app on their own smartphones. While they drive, the
smartphone needs to be mounted on the windshield so that the road ahead of the vehicle
is visible. Out of concern for the safety and security of the volunteers, participation is
currently allowed only inside vehicles, where the recording is covert and so the risk that
the volunteer will be identified by violators is minimal. The app keeps the smartphone
camera on in the background for the entire duration of driving. When volunteers notice a
traffic violation, they can record the event using voice command. A video clip covering
60 s (30 s before and 30 s after the activation) is recorded and location and time information
is captured by the app. A report is automatically transmitted to a secure application server
at the program’s control center, which initiates its evaluation. The volunteers are not
expected to make any trips specifically for the purpose of enforcement. They are also not
compensated in any way for their participation.
The overall reports’ evaluation process is shown in Figure 1. After a violation report
is received, the reporting volunteer can view the video clip in the server portal and decide
whether to withdraw or keep it for further assessment. At this point, the volunteer can
also add text or audio descriptions of the violation. The completed report is passed on
for review at the control center. There, another volunteer conducts an initial screening
focusing on the quality and completeness of the information provided. Reports may be
rejected for various reasons, such as having poor video quality, inability to identify the
violating vehicle, an incomplete record of the violation itself (e.g., red traffic light not visible
in the video) and so on. The reports that pass this screening are then reviewed by two
professional inspectors. They verify the occurrence of the violation and the existence of the
necessary evidence, and they evaluate the severity of the violation. While these are also
volunteers, normally, at least one of them has relevant professional experience (e.g., past
police service or long-time volunteer experience in traffic enforcement). Reports that are
not confirmed by both inspectors are discarded.
Next, reports that document violations that are perceived as severe or life-threatening
are forwarded to the PTD for further action. Notice letters are sent by the control center
to the violators in cases that are judged to be less severe. The notice letter describes the
violation, explains its safety consequences and provides a link to the recorded video clip.
The PTD examines the reports and issues citations, including court subpoenas if needed, to
the violators. Due to administrative difficulties, violators in cases that are not considered
for further action by the PTD do not receive notice letters.
Sustainability 2021,13, 11966 4 of 13
Figure 1. Framework for the process of reports’ evaluation.
3. Data, Methods and Research Questions
The analysis is based on a database of all recorded reports within the program and
their handling during the initial 24 months of its operation. For each report, the following
data items were provided: a unique report index, report creation date, status update date,
controller index (party who updates the status), vehicle type, violation classification, loca-
tion and description. Due to privacy regulations, personal information and socio-economic
characteristics of both violators and volunteers were not provided to the researchers.
The final dataset created for the analysis was a fusion of the available information in
the raw data. It included for each report the details of its creation date, all steps taken in
its evaluation according to the process illustrated in Figure 1, the final outcome, violation
classification and coded identity of the reporting volunteer.
Sustainability 2021,13, 11966 5 of 13
The focus of the analysis was on evaluating the characteristics of the Road Guards
program that indicate its potential usefulness as an enforcement tool. Specifically, the
program’s outcomes and the volunteers’ level of engagement in the program over time
were analyzed. The research questions addressed are threefold:
First, what is the volunteers’ level of engagement in the program in terms of enrollment
and report production rates and their change over time? Continued substantial levels of
engagement are critical for the program’s sustainability. Second, what are the process
outcomes in terms of the final states of submitted reports, especially the citations and
notice letters they produce, and how do these vary with respect to the characteristics of the
volunteers, such as their level of engagement or seniority? This indicates the program’s
efficiency and may help to evaluate scaling possibilities and cost implications. Third, what
types of reports and citations are produced, and how do they compare to those generated
by traditional police enforcement? This can indicate the program’s potential to not only
increase enforcement quantities but also capture violations that are otherwise difficult
to enforce.
4. Results
4.1. Volunteers’ Reporting Behavior
By the end of January 2018, after 24 months of operation, there were 3424 volunteers
involved in this program who submitted 64,258 violation reports. Figure 2presents the
levels of volunteers’ activity over time. Part (a) of the figure shows the total number of
volunteers in the system at the end of a specific month, the number of active volunteers (i.e.,
those that submitted reports within that specific month) and the number of reports that
they submitted. Part (b) shows the average number of reports submitted in each month
normalized by the total number of volunteers or by the number of active volunteers, along
with the ratio of active volunteers to all volunteers. The figures show that the number of
volunteers started to grow after about six months of operation and continued to increase
steadily from then onward. However, the numbers of active volunteers did not increase
at the same rate and remained roughly constant over the last six months. As a result, the
proportion of active volunteers to all volunteers in the system decreased over time to a
level of 0.26 in the last two months. That is, only a quarter of the volunteers were actually
active in the program at the end of the study period. Similarly, the number of submitted
reports increased over time, but stabilized in the last few months. The average number of
reports per volunteer generally decreased over time and stabilized in the last six months at
about 1.4 reports per volunteer and 4.8 reports per active ones.
Figure 2.
(
a
) Numbers of submitted reports and total and active volunteers by month; (
b
) average number of reports per
volunteer, per active volunteer and the ratio of active volunteers to all volunteers by month.
Figure 3shows the average number of reports that volunteers submitted as a function
of their seniority, i.e., the time that had passed since they joined the program. The sizes of
Sustainability 2021,13, 11966 6 of 13
the circles representing various seniority levels signify the numbers of relevant volunteers.
A decaying trend is evident in the figure. On average, the volunteers submitted about
four reports in their first month in the program. This value decreases within the next six
months and then stabilized at about 1.4 reports in a month. These values reflect the same
trend mentioned earlier: a large proportion of inactive volunteers and a small proportion
of active ones.
Figure 3. Average number of submitted reports by seniority in the program.
4.2. Process Outcomes
Table 1shows the numbers of reports that passed through the various steps of the
evaluation process, which was presented in Figure 1, and the final actions taken on these
reports. The percentages presented in the table are derived from the total of initially
submitted reports. More than one-third of the submitted reports were immediately rejected
by the individuals that submitted them. Another 40% were rejected in the later steps of the
initial screening and after two rounds of review. Among the remaining reports (23.4% of
all submitted reports), about 40% (9.7% of all initially submitted reports) were judged to be
of high severity and sent to the police. The rest of the offenders (13.7% of all submitted
reports) were issued notice letters. The police issued citations in response to about 40% of
the reports it received, which amounted to 4.3% of all submitted reports. Notice letters
were not issued when the reports were rejected by the police, although the violations were
judged more severely by the reviewers compared to those in reports where letters were
sent. Had letters also been sent in these cases, they would have amounted to over 19% of
all submitted reports.
Table 1. Final status of all the submitted reports.
Description Reports Terminated/Action Taken Reports in Process
Submitted reports - 64,258 (100%)
Reported review 23,400 (36.4%)/None 40,858 (63.6%)
Initial screening 5904 (9.2%)/None 34,954 (54.4%)
Review 1 & 2 19,892 (31.0%)/None 15,062 (23.4%)
Severity level 8796 (13.7%)/Issued notice letter 6266 (9.7%)
Police Traffic Department (PTD) review 3529 (5.5%)/None 2737 (4.3%)/Issued citation
Sustainability 2021,13, 11966 7 of 13
These results show that most reports were discarded without taking action. Thus, it is
useful to examine whether specific characteristics of the volunteers and their behaviors
over time affect the final statuses of the reports they submitted. Figures 4and 5show the
proportions of reports terminated with a citation (a) or notice letter (b) as a function of the
total number of reports that the volunteer had submitted and of the number of months
the volunteer had been on the program, respectively. All volunteers who submitted the
same number of reports or had the same level of seniority in the program are grouped
together, and their average proportion is reported. The size of a circle signifies the number
of volunteers in the group. In Figure 4, the point at the highest value of the range shown
(300 reports) represents 21 volunteers that submitted a larger number of reports. The figure
shows that citations and notice letters were not strongly associated with the number of
submitted reports. The correlation coefficients between the number of submitted reports
and these outcomes were 0.15 and 0.18, respectively. The results in Figure 5also show that
no association was found between the proportion of reports resulting in citations and the
volunteer’s seniority in the program; the correlation between these variables was
−
0.10.
A clearer pattern can be observed with respect to reports that resulted in notice letters.
This proportion was initially low and increased over time; after the initial four months,
it remained stable. This result may reflect a learning experience for the volunteers with
respect to submitting reports on less severely perceived violations.
Figure 4.
Proportion of reports resulting in citations (
a
) and in notice letters (
b
) by the number of reports that the
volunteer submitted.
Figure 5.
Proportion of reports resulting in citations (
a
) and in notice letters (
b
) by the number of months the volunteer had
been in the program.
Sustainability 2021,13, 11966 8 of 13
4.3. Violation Types
The nature and circumstances of enforcement within the program differed substan-
tially from that typically conducted by the police, which may have impacted the violation
types captured by the volunteers. Table 2presents the distribution of violation types
in volunteer reports and citations and in regular police citations. The police data were
obtained from their 2016 and 2017 annual statistical reports [
32
,
33
]. Table 2also shows the
crash risk implications of various violation types derived from analyses in Boris and Murry
(2018) and Ba et al. (2018) [34,35].
Table 2. Violation type proportions and their crash risk associations.
Violation Type Volunteers
Police
Crash Risk Association
Reports Citations Boris and Murray (2018) Ba et al. (2018)
Speeding 0 0 0.26 Medium Medium
Parking 0 0 0.15 - Low
Safety equipment 0 0 0.10 Low -
Traffic signs 0.18 0.14 0.09 Medium -
Lane use and deviations 0.14 0.11 0.08 High -
Unsafe
driving/Overtaking/On
shoulder
0.08/0.17/0.17
0.06/0.20/0.31
0.09 High Medium
Running red light 0.09 0.09 0.03 Low High
Others 0.17 0.09 0.20 - -
The most common citations issued by the police were for speeding, parking and
failure to use safety equipment (e.g., seat belt, child restraint). It is difficult or impossible
to capture these violations with sufficient legal proof in video recordings, and therefore,
they are not present in the volunteer reports at all. The violation types that could be clearly
observed in the recordings, such as disregarding traffic signs, running red lights and using
lanes illegally or deviating from them, were better represented in the volunteer reports and
citations compared to in the police citations. The most evident difference concerned unsafe
driving violations. These included, for example, using a held-hand phone, overtaking,
illegally crossing the median line, reckless driving, driving backwards and driving on the
shoulder. These are often violations that are difficult for the police to enforce due to their
widespread geographic distribution and short duration. As a result, they make up only
9% of police citations. However, they received substantial attention from the volunteers.
Altogether, 42% of their reports and 57% of the citations generated from these reports were
in this category. Most notably, 20% of the citations were for overtaking and median crossing
violations and 31% were for driving on the shoulders. These violations are relatively easy
to capture in recordings and are generally perceived as severe by the public.
A comparison of the volunteers’ reports and the citations generated from them shows
higher rates of rejected reports for failing to adhere to traffic signs, deviating from lane
and ‘other’ violations. This reflects the difficulty of clearly observing these violations, in a
legal sense, in the recordings. Running a red light, driving on the shoulders, overtaking,
crossing median lines and other unsafe driving violations are easier to observe and so are
rejected at lower rates.
Research has shown that the effect of enforcement is stronger when it uses multiple
methods [
36
] and when the offense is non-stationary and unpredictable [
37
,
38
]. The
volunteer reports demonstrated both these characteristics. As shown above, they helped to
diversify the types of violations enforced, and by their nature, increased the geographic
spread and randomness of locations where enforcement took place. Furthermore, the
crash risk implications of various violation types differed. Boris and Murry (2018) and
Sustainability 2021,13, 11966 9 of 13
Ba et al. (2018) [34,35]
quantify the increased crash risks associated with specific violation
types for truck and taxi drivers, respectively. Their violation classifications differ from
each other and from that reported in this research. Therefore, the violations in the data in
this study were matched with the most similar ones from the literature and the impacts
were converted to a three-level scale: high, medium and low. Note that not all violation
types used in the current studies were matched. Table 2shows that 91% of the volunteers
generated citations for violation types that were associated with at least a medium increase
of crash risk in at least one of the two studies, compared to only a 55% association for the
police citations. Thus, the volunteer-generated citations were of high quality in terms of
the violation types’ association with the crash risk.
5. Discussion
The available data from the first 24 months of operation of the Road Guards program
included over 64,000 reports that were submitted by more than 3400 volunteers. The
number of volunteers, and with it, the number of submitted reports, started to grow after
about six months of operation, and continued to increase steadily afterward.
The first research question addressed in this paper related to the level of engagement of
volunteers and the evolution of this over time. The long-term sustainability of the program
depends on its ability to generate and maintain a high level of engagement from volunteers.
The data showed that newly recruited volunteers were more active. On average, volunteers
submitted about four reports in their first month on the program. This value decreased
within the next six months and then stabilized at about 1.4 reports per month. Many
volunteers became inactive with the passage of time: The proportion of active volunteers
(i.e., those who submitted reports within a specific month) to all volunteers in the system
decreased over time to a level of 0.26 in the last two months. Thus, on one hand, a large
proportion of volunteers became less active or practically dropped off the program; on the
other hand, the stabilization of the rate of report submission indicates that other volunteers
remained active and continued to contribute to the program. Consequently, steps should
be taken to preserve volunteers’ interest and willingness to participate over time, with the
goal of keeping the high initial involvement and reducing attrition.
The second research question related to the final outcomes of the submitted reports.
The program would be more efficient if a large proportion of reports resulted in practical
outcomes, namely, notice letters and citations. In the current data, more than one-third of
the submitted reports were immediately rejected by the volunteers who submitted them.
Another 40% were rejected in later steps of the review process. These numbers suggest
that volunteers, who are generally not professional enforcement officers, submit many
irrelevant reports. However, it should be noted that this may also be a by-product of the
nature of such enforcement and its evaluation process: Some of the rejections, especially in
the initial steps, were an inevitable result of differences between what the volunteers saw
and the information captured in the recordings. Feedback and training programs, as well
as improvements to the app’s interface, may support the volunteers in their initial review
and help to avoid the additional effort associated with later rejections.
The remaining 15,062 reports accounted for less than a quarter of the initially submit-
ted reports. For about 60% of these, the offenders were issued notice letters. The remaining
40% were judged to reflect more severe violations and the recordings were sent to the police.
The police issued citations in response to about 40% of the reports that they received, which
amounted to 4.3% of all submitted reports. Notice letters were not issued when the reports
were rejected by the police, although the violations were judged more severely by the
programs’ reviewers compared to those in reports where letters were sent. Had letters also
been sent in these cases, they would have amounted to over 19% of all submitted reports
(instead of 13.7%, as were actually issued letters). Thus, the program would benefit from
issuing notice letters to offenders in cases where the police reject the report. Furthermore,
consideration may be given to identifying repeat violators and treating these reports with
careful consideration.
Sustainability 2021,13, 11966 10 of 13
As noted above, most reports were discarded without taking action, neither issuing
a citation nor a notice letter. Thus, it is useful to examine whether specific characteristics
of the volunteers and their behaviors over time affected the final statuses of the reports
that they submitted. It was found that the proportion of cases ending in a citation or notice
letter was not strongly associated with the volunteer’s level of engagement (when that
was measured by the number of reports that they submitted). The correlation coefficients
between the number of submitted reports and these two outcomes were 0.15 and 0.18,
respectively. Further to this, no association was found between the volunteers’ seniority in
the program, in terms of months since they joined, and the proportion of reports resulting in
citations; the correlation between these variables was -0.10. A clearer pattern was observed
with respect to reports that resulted in notice letters; these were initially low, then increased
over time and remained stable. This may reflect a learning experience for the volunteers
with respect to submitting reports on supposedly less severe violations whether or not they
deserved consideration.
The third research question addressed the types of violations captured in the program.
These, both in terms of the reports submitted and the citations issued, greatly differed
from those issued by the police in their regular enforcement activities. Some of these
differences resulted from the capabilities and limitations of the technology used to record
the violations in the Road Guard program. It is difficult or impossible to produce reports
with clear evidence on speeding or violations taking place inside the vehicle, such as the
use of handheld devices while driving or failure to use seatbelts. In contrast, violations that
are easily noticed and documented from the volunteers’ vehicles were the most common.
These included lane deviations (including crossing continuous white line), running a red
light, driving on the road shoulders and reckless driving behavior (including aggressive
turns and failure to give the right of way. These easily observed violations were also less
likely to be rejected in the report evaluation process. Moreover, our comparison showed
that the vast majority of volunteer citations were for the violations associated with the
highest risk levels, whilst these were significantly less represented in police citations.
These results indicate that the program can be used to complement police enforcement,
thus helping to boost conventional approaches where they are less effective. The violations
captured by the volunteers were characterized by a wide spatial distribution and violation
types that differed substantially from those addressed by traditional police activity. These
characteristics support the main goal of enforcement, which is deterrence from engagement
in risky and non-compliant driving behaviors. Furthermore, the work of the program may
increase public acceptance of enforcement and awareness of road safety as the violations
captured by the volunteers were generally ones perceived as severe by the public. It should
be noted that this program does not induce negative externalities to society since the
volunteers record offenses they note during regular daily driving.
This study is, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the first evaluation of a volunteer-
based enforcement program. The program demonstrates how technology can be utilized to
increase enforcement levels through public engagement when that is kept evidence-based
and professional. The evaluation showed that the program may benefit from improved
training and feedback to the volunteers on their reporting and initial review inputs, which
could help to reduce the rate of rejection in later steps. Further actions to preserve volun-
teers’ interest and willingness over time should also be taken.
While the paper points out the program’s potential, the study’s limitations should
also be acknowledged. During the period of two years of operation, there were changes in
the program, such as updates to the app and technical and staffing changes in the control
center. These were not captured in the data and so were not considered in the analysis.
Furthermore, the analysis focused on evaluation of the program’s outputs: reports, citations
and notice letters. The resources used to produce these (e.g., work hours, manpower)
were not evaluated in the current study due to a lack of availability of the relevant data.
Volunteers’ socioeconomic characteristics, which were also not available, may too have
played a role in their reporting behavior and thus influenced the program’s outputs.
Sustainability 2021,13, 11966 11 of 13
Furthermore, the data available from the PTD on the types of violations reported, and their
comparison to PTD-recorded violations, were limited to an assessment of broad types. More
detailed information, and association of the violation types with additional characteristics
such as spatial and temporal distributions, would support additional research in this
direction. Finally, the program affects many parties (e.g., it helps to reduce the strain on the
limited resources available to the PTD), and therefore, a stakeholder analysis should be
performed for a comprehensive evaluation.
6. Conclusions
This study presents an evaluation of a new and unique type of traffic enforcement—the
Israeli Road Guards program. This program uses simple technology to enable evidence-
based enforcement of traffic violations by the general public. In doing so, it supports
increased enforcement levels and public engagement in the process. This analysis of
data from the initial 24 months of operation showed that this type of program is a useful
complementary tool to traditional police enforcement. The volunteers report different types
of traffic violations compared to those typically captured by the police. They also help to
increase the geographic spread and spontaneity of enforcement locations. Furthermore, the
citations they generate tend to be of violations that are associated with higher crash risks.
The program is sustainable as the enforcement activities are carried out during the
volunteers’ regular daily trips and so do not induce additional traffic. The volunteers’ work
may also increase public acceptance of traffic enforcement and promote public awareness
of road safety. Although the average number of reports that volunteers submitted declined
initially, it stabilized after few months at around 1.4 reports per month. Furthermore, the
quality of these reports in terms of the proportions that resulted in citations or notice letters
improved with experience, indicating that volunteers learned with experience.
The program’s implementation could be improved. Its efficiency was negatively
affected by high levels of rejected reports and by volunteer attrition. More comprehensive
training and feedback for the volunteers on their reporting and initial review inputs
could help to reduce the rate of rejections in later steps, and as a result, the workload for
reviewers. Actions to preserve volunteers’ interest and willingness to actively participate
in the program may include the use of incentive plans, periodic meetings with volunteers
and other forms of acknowledgement for their contribution. Another specific problem with
the current operation of the program is that no action is taken for those reports that are
transferred to the police but a citation is then not issued. The resolution of this issue is
straightforward, i.e., sending notice letters to these offenders who currently fall through a
procedural gap. Finally, consideration should be given to identifying repeated violators
and treating reports associated with them with careful attention.
Regardless of the limitations of this study, the results highlight the contribution of this
type of enforcement to a sustainable and safe transportation system.
Author Contributions:
Conceptualization, G.A. and T.T.; methodology, G.A. and T.T.; software, D.B.;
validation, T.T. and D.B.; formal analysis, T.T. and D.B.; investigation, G.A., T.T. and D.B.; resources,
D.B.; data curation, D.B.; writing—original draft preparation, G.A. and D.B.; writing—review and
editing, G.A. and T.T.; visualization, G.A. and T.T.; supervision, G.A. and T.T.; project administration,
G.A. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding: This research received no external funding.
Data Availability Statement: Restrictions apply to the availability of these data.
Acknowledgments:
The authors thank Yair Nativ from Safe Lane and his colleagues at the program’s
management center for their support and for providing access to the data used in this study.
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Sustainability 2021,13, 11966 12 of 13
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