The objective of RiPCORD-iSEREST was to give scientific support to the European transport policy to reach the 2010 transport road safety target by establishing best practice tools and guidelines for road infrastructure safety measures. Further, tools have been established to assess the cost efficiency of different safety measures in order to develop and manage a safe road infrastructure in a cost effective way. In addition, recommendations on the best tools in a specific situation have been worked out. For accident prediction models, road safety audits, road safety inspections and black spot management best practices have been identified and compiled into best practice guidelines. While the common practice concerning road safety audits and accident prediction models does not differ widely among different states, road safety inspections are applied differently and the definition of best practices seemed difficult. To take the differences into account a "common understanding approach" has been defined. Concerning black spot management apart from different definitions two completely different approaches have been identified, the data based approach and the model based approach. Even within the consortium a common understanding on the best practices was difficult to achieve. As accident analyses show, most of the casualties on rural roads are caused by run-off-the-road and head-on-collisions on single carriageway roads. Consequently, measures preventing these kinds of accidents have been developed. One of these measures is the concept of self-explaining roads. Recommendations have been worked out on the design of standardised and self-explaining roads. About half of all road traffic fatalities and injuries in rural areas in Europe occur on secondary roads. These roads are two-lane rural roads not compromised by the primary network which encompasses e.g. multilane freeways and two-lane rural highways with major importance in network function. Concerning the reduction of the number of accidents on secondary roads, software tools and a handbook as decision support tools for local road authorities have been developed. (Author/publisher)
Abstract