Safety interaction between road structure, traffic circulation and route choice; Overview of the results of the projects Route choice in a road network (2003-2006) and Function (2007-2010). In two research projects SWOV investigated whether road safety can be improved by making changes in road structure and road categorization according to the functional requirements of Sustainable Safety. One of these demands is that the fastest route is also the safest route. This is often not the case in practice. The results of this research will make it possible to check in the planning and design phases of a road network to which extent it meets the Sustainable Safety requirements. The present report contains an overview of the results of both research -projects. There were three leading questions: 1. Which research methods can be used to study the safety aspects of route choice? 2. What is the safety level of the routes that are chosen presently? This includes developing indicators and criteria to be able to determine the routes' safety. 3. Is it possible to influence route choice in favour of the safe routes? If so, in which manner? And what are the road safety effects?
Abstract