Federative Republic of Brazil National Road Safety Capacity Review

Formosa is a municipality of 110,000 people in Goiás, and is actively moving to further manage traffic having started municipalized traffic only recently. Municipal guards are authorized to enforce traffic only by arrangement with DETRAN and the State Military Police. 48 of the 260 municipal guards had been trained to undertake traffic enforcement, at the time of our visit in early 2015. Only around 30% of those fined for traffic offences pay in the initial period. Enforcement includes active checking of vehicle registration because this reduces fine avoidance. Unregistered vehicles (usually because of outstanding fines) are supposedly impounded by State Military police. However, often this does not occur because available vehicle storage is filled. Formosa is planning to provide more vehicle storage for this activity but it had not occurred at the time of writing.

Formosa records crash details, except if the crash is fatal in which case State Military Police are called. There is duplication of crash data with Formosa holding two crash databases (the municipality’s own database and the DETRAN database); Formosa’s crash data are recorded into the DETRAN system of Goias as well as their own system, and the data are also collected by Federal Police and State Military Police.

There is also duplication of enforcement records and processes, with Formosa recording infringements in their own data system as well as into DETRAN’s system in order to have penalty points on licenses activated. Fines are paid to DETRAN, which pays part of the money back to Formosa.

Formosa reports that they issue around 20 infringements per day. This is a low rate relative to having 48 Municipal Guards able to issue tickets. Even allowing for days off, this amounts to well under 1 ticket per day per guard. There is also duplication of organizations to issue tickets: DETRAN at the state level and CITRAN at the municipal level.

Formosa does not have a plan or a target for road safety.

The three levels of government (national, state and local) do not co-ordinate extensively on Road Safety legislation, which is set nationally. In addition, Road Safety considerations are at times over-ridden by non-Road Safety considerations such as political expediency and productivity (sometimes misperceived as being increased by higher speeds). Examples include allowing higher mass limits for heavy vehicles, legislated requirements for warning signs at speed camera locations (see below), and legislated tolerances of 7% on speed enforcement (rising to 10 at 100km/h), despite the evidence for a clear and substantial role of low level speeding in road deaths and injuries^{47 48}.

Brazilian federal law dictates that fixed speed cameras must be preceded by a warning sign. This requirement adversely impacts Road Safety: a mix of overt and covert cameras has been proven to provide better crash and casualty reductions than overt cameras alone⁴⁹. With appropriate communications and awareness, the flexibility to provide general warning signage but not signage explicitly prior to all fixed cameras may encourage broader suppression of speeding, rather than motorists slowing down only at speed camera sites. Although fixed cameras as treatments for crash locations are appropriate, enforcement must also suppress speeding more broadly across the road network.

Vital interest in Road Safety exists among a few members of the Federal parliament. However, there appears to be no parliamentary committee on Road Safety in the federal parliament or most state parliaments. Ideally, such committees would have goals to strengthen the development of the Road Safety legislative framework, increase public awareness of Road Safety and the role of government in Road Safety, and hold investigations on specific Road Safety issues resulting in evidence-based recommendations for policy and/or legislative change. Committees of this form work effectively for Road Safety in other countries.