The EU directive 2008/96/EG regarding highway infrastructure and safety management was implemented into national law in December, 2010. It makes provisions for safety audits, infrastructure projects, safety ratings, and safety management of the existing highway system, as well as regular safety inspections. Based on the 2002 recommendation for a highway safety audit, which made available an approved formal procedure for evaluating safety issues involving planned roads, there exists a particular need for an appropriate procedure for the preventative detection of safety deficits. This makes the basic analysis clear. The use of surveys, experience exchanges, and first pre-tests with road maintenance depots and highway administrations in a procedural analysis showed the strengths and weaknesses of the current procedure. The process of road inspection draws on a significantly reliable and stable structure. Derived from this is the need for improvement of the current procedure, as well as fundamentals and approaches for supplementary safety examinations. Using the expanded road inspection process as a model for a comprehensive inspection, and selected key topics and the particular inventory audit as a model for a comprehensive procedure, two different approaches were developed. Appropriate tools, such as deficit lists, training programs, and instructions for users, were created, and, on the basis of pilot applications and discussions with experts, coordinated. In the expanded road inspection, approximately 1,840 kilometers of highways were examined by highway inspectors. This showed that the road maintenance service had a large body of experience with regard to road infrastructure and road equipment at their disposal, and were in a position to identify safety-related planning deficits. Most of these deficits were determined to be obstacles in required side-spaces and vehicle restraint systems. The conduction of exemplary inventory audits of six stretches of highway provided important findings in regard to the design of the procedure Since the expanded road inspection showed that the methodical approach and the tools that had been developed basically functioned, only slight adjustments were needed. (Author/publisher)
Abstract