Every year, 14,000 motorists die and countless numbers are seriously injured as the result of single-vehicle collisions on European roads. The number and severity of these accidents can be reduced through the establishment of European best practices guidelines. RISER (Roadside Infrastructure for Safer European Roads, http://www.riser-project.com/) is an EU-funded research initiative to achieve a Europe-wide consensus on the design, implementation and maintenance of road safety devices based on a better understanding of collision parameters. The foundation of the RISER project is that improved data collection combined with the establishment of pan-European guidelines can reduce the number and severity of single-vehicle accidents. By providing a comprehensive input on the do's and don'ts of roadside equipment design, RISER comes at a crucial time in research on road infrastructure safety as a growing number of road authorities are seeking innovative approaches to reducing their road-related death injury and mortality statistics. The final seminar is held in Budapest, 30 November - 1 December 2005 under the high patronage of the Hungarian Ministry of Economy and Transport, ERF and the RISER consortium. The purpose of this event is to discuss engineering good practices covering such areas as accident data analysis, preventive hazard identification and road safety audits. The presentations will be completed on Day 2 with on-site field demonstrations of roadside engineering techniques applied to road sections open to traffic. Workshop Presentations: Road safety situation and motorway network development in Hungary, Dr. Peter Lanyi, Senior Counsellor, Hungarian Ministry of Economy and Transport; European Road Safety Policy Overview, Brendan Halleman, Director of Operations, European Union Road Federation (ERF); RISER introduction & overview of RISER guidelines, Dr. Robert Thomson, Chalmers University of Technology; Roadside Hazard Identification in the EU, Claire Naing, Vehicle Safety Research Centre; Accident analysis and the response of the Infrastructure, Cees Klootwijk, TNO; Recovery zones, Olivier Bisson, Centre d'Exploitation Technique de l'Equipement; Protection of Hazards, Ángel Martínez, Hierros y Aplanaciones - HIASA; Roadside infrastructure & driver behaviour, Richard van den Horst, TNO. Guest Contributions: Rating road risk with EuroRAP, Bo Lönegren, EuroRAP; Applying RISER results to safety audits, Steve Proctor (TMS Audit); Roadside safety aspects in audits - the Dutch approach, Warner van Hattem (Dutch Ministry of Transport); The ROBUST project, Prof. Marco Anghileri (Politecnico Milano); Hungarian standarsds & design practices, Lazlo Keresztes (Hungarian Road Association). A summary of the RISER speaker presentations is also available in issue 05/05 of Engineering Safer Roads (http://www.erf.be/images/ESR8.pdf). (Author/publisher)
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