Road accidents are the cause of many casualties among road users all over the world. Each year approximately 45,000 fatalities and more than 1.6 billion injuries occur in the member states of the EU. The total costs of road accidents are estimated at an annual ECU 160 billion. A great part of these accidents take place at junctions. The aim of this report is to provide road safety at major urban junctions, with special attention to vulnerable road users. The focus is on signalised junctions, priority junctions and rounabouts. This report is a review of the body of knowledge and experience of how to design urban junctions and is based on a compilation and description of guidelines, research studies and accident prevention models from different EU-countries. This report has been compiled by the Danish Road Directorate, with contributions from Sweden, The Netherlands, Germany, France, Czech Republic, United Kingdom and Norway. Road safety institutes and road authorities outside Europe were also requested to send material, but with no response. The report consists of four parts: (1) criteria for main types of urban junction; (2) description of different junction types; (3) the individual elements of a junction; and (4) description of different types of accident prediction model. (A)
Abstract