The paper discusses current views on the application of road safety audits (RSA) as a tool for the improvement of road safety and evaluates some features that can influence their effectiveness on the field. Starting from a review of published references on RSA in different countries, the work identified a set of questions and undertook a case study of the impact of alternative RSA procedures on its final effectiveness measured both as agreement to a safety expert checklist and to an accident-based study. Main features analysed in the case study included the type of observer used for data collection on the field (a senior safety engineer, a senior design engineer, a junior safety engineer, a junior design engineer), and the type of checklist used as guide to work in the field (a generic set of questions, a detailed set of questions, a detailed set of questions with observation hints). Based on an exploratory study in one intersection, the performance of applications of RSA is compared using weighted indexes of concordance and disagreement and the ratings on detection or omission of observations gathered in the accident diagnostic of safety problems on the site. The main conclusions of the case study can be summarized as clear support to team work practices for field observation (as no single observer approached the full set of diagnostic features gathered in the accident-based study), support to employing less experienced personnel for field observation (at least if using detailed checklists with instructions without dispensing supervision) and sign to the need for priority setting procedures/criteria (as the large number of features included several non-critical problems or even misleading points). The conclusions are useful in selecting alternative RSA procedural guidelines in agencies responsible for promoting or enforcing RSA and in professional teams carrying-out RSAs. Several features deserving further study are also identified. (Author/publisher)
Abstract