This paper was presented at the `Safety Audits and Value Engineering for Highway Design' session. The practice of conducting road safety audits is well established in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, and has proven to be a cost effective method of preventing motor vehicle crashes. The Insurance Corporation of British Columbia, through their Road Improvement Program, have been applying certain elements of the road safety audit in communities throughout British Columbia. To date all road safety audits have been applied to existing intersections or road corridors and have been used to develop countermeasures to reduce the number and severity of crashes. Due to the very high social costs of crashes on the roadways it is desirable to employ road safety audits in all aspects of road design, construction and maintenance, as a tool to prevent crashes. Much of the road safety concerns relate to provincial highways, and these concerns are exacerbated when these highways traverse an urban area. The next phase of the Road Improvement Program will seek to apply the road safety audit to new roadways or roadway reconstruction projects to prevent crashes and to elevate road safety to the same level as environmental or operational aspects. (A)
Abstract