Road safety is one of the first aims of urban transport. Accidents with crashes against obstacles are a real safety problem in France: they concern a third of the fatal accidents in urban areas, with 900 killed a year. But whereas there are many studies and a large variety of solutions in rural areas, there is a shortage of information on this problem in urban areas. The paper presents results of the first study in France (and perhaps in Europe) on this specific subject and gives some answers to the following questions: what is the dimension of the safety problem, which type of crash happens, where do they occur, what are the most dangerous obstacles, and which general recommendations are possible in an urban design? In urban areas, prevention of this type of accident by road design measures is difficult, because there is a lot of street furniture essential to urban life which can be collided with. The study suggested that the first solution remains an effective speed reduction; so that the crash severity is not too high. But in some cases, it should be completed by improvements, such as new guard rails adapted to urban environment. It will also probably lead to the use of more breakable systems, for example for lighting or signs poles. Information for technical services in cities, to explain the problem and develop simple prevention measures, is proposed. For the covering abstract see ITRD E126595.
Abstract