This paper discusses a common expressway roadside safety problem in China through a typical example, Jingjintang expressway and introduces some effective roadside structure by analyzing of the typical historical accident record during 2002~2004. The severity of the expressway problem has called great concern on the road safety. A high proportion of fatal crashes occurred on roadside in expressway during the past few years in China. Some design components included horizontal alignment, vertical alignment, superelevation, hydraulic design and sight distance to name some of the most common freeway design elements. These elements have been revised and refined over the years through experience and research. However, Roadside safety design and maintenance still don't become a discussed aspect of highway design and maintenance until now. Meanwhile, problems like volume over load, too many crash accidents exist on almost all the expressways, especially the roadside accidents account for a large scale of the total accidents. The paper presents the practical crash investigative results about the roadside accidents.uCombining with the design criteria of other countries, the paper puts forgive concept, analyzes the expressway design factors which influence the roadside safety and evaluates the current Chinese design specification on slope, barrier, drainage, shoulder and curb. The purpose of this paper is to present the concept of roadside safety to the Chinese designer in such a way that the most traffic accident, types and roadside structure can be accomplished for each project. For the covering abstract see ITRD E138091. This paper is available from http://www.ictct.org/workshops/07-Beijing/65JiangbiHu243255.pdf.
Abstract