Road engineering is proving relatively successful at dealing with accident clusters but one result of this success is that the remaining accidents are more likely to be scattered along a route rather than clustered at specific sites. The Highways Agency Road Safety Strategy has a target to reduce accidents on English trunk roads by one third. To achieve this a move towards treatment of whole routes rather than accident cluster sites will be necessary. One aim of the engineering measures used in route treatments is to offer drivers a consistent understanding of repeated features such as villages, junctions or bends so that they can adjust their driving behaviour to fit the conditions. This paper describes the principles on which this concept of route treatment is based and considers the issues involved in implementing it. Issues such as scheme identification, consultation, phasing of implementation works and monitoring are discussed. Details of how these concepts have been applied in one Highways Agency Area and the results obtained are presented. The routes were treated between 1999 and 2002: 1999 - A6/A523 accident reduction trials; 2000 - A6 High Lane/Disley/Furness Vale, traffic safety measures; 2000 - A616 Langsett and Midhopestones, traffic safety measures; 2000 - A616 Stocksbridge bypass, signs and road markings; 2001 - A628 Woodhead, traffic safety measures; and 2002 - A523 Leek to Hazel Grove, traffic safety measures. For the covering abstract see ITRD E119888. This paper may also be accessed by Internet users at: http://www.rospa.com/CMS/viewarticle.asp?article=3850&scheme=7
Abstract