Abstract
The first section describes briefly the organization and financing of the road building authorities in South Africa and indicates the scale of operations today. The historical development of road research in the C.S.I.R. from 1951 to the present time is then briefly sketched. An analysis of the broad problems of road research on the materials and construction side is then given and followed by some notes on the present structure of the Institute. The last two sections of the paper deal essentially with principles, in particular with the methods of planning and conducting research in the field and finally with the problem of communicating research ideas and findings to the practical road engineer to whom falls the task of using the results.