Road design with focus to safety has been extensively developed in recent decades in Nordic and some other EU countries with the main aim to achieve a decrease in a number of accidents and fatalities on the roads. These countries gained many valuable experiences, but they had to sacrifice great effort, expenses, and time to reach the present position. The purpose of the report is to review some design approaches with focus to safety and discuss the general way that they may be applied. Three levels of safety are recognised: 1) general - design standards, national safety policies and road hierarchy; 2) local authority and road administrator; and 3) three specific safety countermeasures - junctions, pedestrian crossings and traffic calming. The first part of the report describes the general road design standards background. Furthermore, it discusses the new approaches in road design standard such as Dutch classification of road standards. Safety policies and programs are discussed and the concept of human imperfection is explained. Road safety policy and road hierarchy in Sweden and Denmark is described. The second part is devoted to the planning process on local authority and road administrator level. The phases of planning process are described. Special attention is paid to ranking process when choosing most effective countermeasures, next to accident black spot programs and also to public attitudes to safety countermeasures. The focus of the last part is in specific designs for safer road environment. Three groups of road facilities and countermeasures are discussed - junctions, pedestrian crossings and traffic calming. The cost, effectiveness, suitability, possible side effects and other properties of individual types of countermeasures are discussed. (Author/publisher) The report is available at the internet: http://www.ep.liu.se/exjobb/itn/2002/kts/019/exjobb.pdf.
Abstract