The concept of having specialist teams of accident investigators has been an established practice in U.K. Highway authorities for over twenty years. These Engineers and Technicians, working with the local Police, study recurrent accident problems and devise site-specific remedial measures that modify the road layout in favour of the users. Monitoring has shown these techniques to be very successful. In the early 1980's Safety Engineers at Kent County Council started to take this monitoring data and use it in discussions with their road design colleagues to encourage them notto repeat unsafe situations in new and modified construction projects. This informal process was codified and in 1984 Kent County Council was the first highway authority in the U.K. to set up a formal procedure known as Safety Audit. This procedure developed over the years and other organisations also adopted similar systems culminating in the U.K. Government adopting the concept for their national roads in 1991. Kent County Council is still recognised as the leading authority in the area of Safety Audit and has now reviewed and updated the procedures which are included in a Quality Assurance system. This is a total quality management package which ensures that the planned and constructed product (i.e. the new or improved road) is to the highest standards possible when handed over to the road user customers. To ensure this objective all types of new and existing road and junction layout are subject to safety performance monitoring studies by Safety Engineers, who liaise on a day-to-day professional level with Design and Maintenance engineers. This not only ensures the safeoperation of the road network, but acts as a form of in-house training to form a safety philosophy within the whole organisation. This personal, professional interaction results in true safety by design. (A).
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