The safest links in a road network are motorways and local streets with traffic calming. Most of the accidents occur on the rest, the larger part, of the network. So for safety reasons motorised traffic should be encouraged to use motorways and should be discouraged to use local streets. However, much traffic will (therefore) use the intermediate roads, which have high accidents figures. These intermediate roads mostly serve for distribution (to and from areas) and at the same time for local access. It is very difficult to separate the two traffic functions in such a way that these roads can still be important links in the road network while being sufficiently safe too. How can proposals for adapting these types of roads be evaluated regarding the safety consequences? Estimation of these consequences should me made possible in all stages of the life cycle of a road of street (planning, design, construction, redesign, and reconstruction). A first sort of estimation, of a qualitative nature, is given by a Road Safety Audit; it gives an expert judgement. The estimation or test becomes more objectified when a proposal is evaluated according to a set of safety requirements. These requirements aim at preventing different accident types, e.g. preventing accidents with opposing vehicles is expressed by the requirement that opposing directions should be separated physically. Tests with these sort of requirements are currently being performed in the Netherlands. The experiences were compared to outcomes of Road Safety Audits. For the covering abstract see ITRD E135448.
Abstract