In the report of late 2001 Safe, What is Safe?, SWOV indicated how the annual number of traffic casualties could be reduced considerably. These proposals were to be regarded as an addition to the proposals as were developed in the then National Traffic and Transport Plan of the Ministry of Transport. In Safe, What is Safe?, we, among other things, calculated that, using measures in the field of roadside safety (shoulders), several dozens of lives would be saved annually on 80 km/h roads. This of a total of 160 road deaths resulting from roadside accidents on such roads. The Ministry of Transport asked SWOV to determine whether such a saving was realistic, and how it could be achieved. Are road authorities at all prepared to pay attention to the problem of roadsides and, if so, how? To obtain information about roadside safety, orientation meetings with road authorities were held and telephone interviews made; mainly with municipalities and provinces. They were asked about recognition of the problem, possible solutions (and hindrances), and costs of measures. We concentrated on the measure 'surfacing or semi-surfacing of shoulders'. This included the future categorisation according to Sustainable Safety. What it did nót involve was a methodologically sound inventory, but it did provide insight into the current situation. A literature study was carried out to determine the effectiveness of the (semi) surfaced shoulder. With this information, we made a (re)calculation of the number of casualties that can be saved with roadside measures. From the meetings with road authorities it appeared that they included the obstacle and shoulder problem in their responsibility. A lot of attention is paid to the (semi) surfacing of shoulders. This is mainly the result of the attention paid to roadside measures in Phase 2 of Sustainably Safe and the Measure-Pointer of the Infopoint Sustainably Safe Traffic. Many provinces and some municipalities are experimenting with designs of the (semi) surfaced shoulder. It appears that the construction of the (semi) surfaced shoulder is often included in large-scale maintenance. Half of the road authorities also reported that the shoulder surfacing is financed from the large-scale maintenance budget. In a few cases the safety budget was used. There is a term of about 15 years for large-scale maintenance for provinces as well as municipalities. If all road authorities could find sufficient budget for shoulder surfacing, this would save more than 30 deaths a year in about 15 years time. These are the results of this study. A cost-benefit analysis showed that these savings are profitable with the investment of €675 million during 15 years. Much can be learnt from the current experimental projects with (semi) surfaced designs. A successful shoulder approach can serve as an example to other road authorities. SWOV is also extremely pleased with the establishment of the CROW working group 'Safe Shoulder Design' that aims at the non-motorways. Apart from shoulder surfacing, a sufficiently obstacle-free zone is important for reducing the number of shoulder accidents. It there is too little room, a protection device as the WICON comes into picture. It appears that this is hardly ever used, partly because of the heavy design and the costs. It is desirable to see if an adapted construction meets the needs more. Inquiries were made in Sweden about the cable barrier. Since recently, this has been applied in the shoulder as a protection device. We recommend investigating whether this barrier is also suitable for the Dutch situation.
Abstract