One of the supplementary measures in the Pilot Programme Sustainable Safety is the development of a road safety audit: a formal, standard procedure in the different stadia of design and construction of the road infrastructure in order to come to an independent judgement of the possible consequences of the design for the road safety. The audit is intended to signal and to indicate how potential road safety problems can be avoided during the design phase and the construction period. In this manner accidents can be prevented and the chances reduced that a dangerous situation is discovered afterwards. The Netherlands Transport Research Centre (AVV) has commissioned the SWOV to set-up an audit protocol that is suitable in practice and that is assured of wide acceptance under the road authorities. The tentative protocol is extensively described in a separate report (Van Schagen, 1998). The report in question describes the background that has led to the tentative protocol and it gives a summary of the protocol itself. Furthermore the most important results are given of a small-scale case study of the practical application of the protocol, that was carried out in the framework of the project by Grontmij, Division Traffic and Infrastructure. Finally, recommendations on the implementation, the management and the evaluation of the instrument are given. It is concluded that the present protocol with a few small follow-up activities is ready to be introduced in the Netherlands. These follow-up activities concern developing so-called checklists for the auditors, providing a temporary pool of auditors and creating acceptance under the road authorities. It is recommended to consider the first phase as a trial period in which data are collected for a quantitative and qualitative evaluation. This could possibly lead to adjustments of the protocol and the checklists. During the trial period a course can also be developed and presented to future, qualified auditors. To ensure that the trial period can take place in an efficient and controlled manner a central administration of the audit instrument has been proposed. To this end an audit secretariat could be given the following tasks: - updating the amount of usage of the instrument and dependent on this the necessary number of auditors; - guarding the procedures and the usefulness of audit recommendations; - compiling data necessary for a quantitative evaluation; - supplying information on the audit to auditors and road authorities.
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