Australian and New Zealand local governments manage extensive road networks. Previous reporting indicate that local government-managed roads represent 82 and 88% of the length of all public roads in both countries, respectively. Local roads tend to carry significantly smaller traffic volumes than state road networks; however, analysis shows that they contribute to more than half of all casualties resulting from road crashes, and an estimated 40 and 46% of fatalities. The lower exposure, combined with the relatively high proportion of casualty crash severity means that the risk to drivers on local government-managed roads is estimated to be up to twice that faced on state roads. Several factors combine to make implementing best practice Safe System infrastructure improvements a concern for local government. However, local councils are in a unique position of being able to harness the commitment and resources from across their organisation, including the elected representatives and local community, to support changes in road user attitudes as well as road planning, design, construction and maintenance to achieve incremental improvements that can make an impact on road safety and contribute to achieving national road safety objectives. The project aimed to develop a greater understanding of Safe System principles amongst local government practitioners and through this, increase application of the Safe System approach on local government-managed roads. The project had the following key components: * identify cost-effective measures applicable to local government roads * undertake a detailed analysis of crash data, identifying key issues by local road environment * investigate a safety management system applicable to local roads * incorporate outcomes from the project into the online practitioner reference tool, the Road Safety Engineering Toolkit * consider the impact of project findings on relevant Austroads Guides. The outcome is a report providing a detailed discussion of the findings of the analysis and investigations. This report also details the development of the Safe System Hierarchy of Control framework and discusses the enhancements to the Road Safety Engineering Toolkit. There is potential for the outcomes of the project to form the core of a Safe System-focused knowledge transfer workshop to assist local government practitioners to understand and apply the Safe System approach on their local road networks. By taking into account all of the outputs of the project, local government will be better able to adopt best practice in many areas of road management, and make valuable incremental improvements towards achieving a Safe System on their network. (Author/publisher)
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