New road projects are constantly being planned and implemented that do not fully exploit the possibility to improve road safety by better design. This can be because there is either a lack of knowledge and understanding of the fundamental issues or as a result of having to balance the various, often competing, interests involved. Transport requirements and economics of the scheme are often given highest priority, followed by environmental, private or political interests with safety considerations last in the list of priorities. The traditional road engineering approach to safety has very often been to 'wait and see', i.e. safety countermeasures are not considered until the crash situation becomes unacceptable. however, having knowledge about the circumstances which provoke crashes means it is possible to detect these faults early on in the development of schemes and certainly well before the design faults are translated into reality. PIARC took the initiative to clarify the definitions of the pro-active procedures of: • Road Safety Audits (RSA) at the project design stage, before any construction has started, screen the designs on paper for any safety issues. This is a formal process best conducted by an independent auditor. • Road Safety inspections (RSI) are an on-site review of an existing road by driving and walking to check whether a series of items are consistent with road safety concerns and to develop guidelines for both. The original procedures for RSA had to be adapted to fit in with the newly developed RSI method. Pre and post-traffic opening RSA stages have now become pre and post- traffic opening Inspections. different checklists have been drawn up for the different stages of a project’s development. The same check lists for pre-and post traffic opening and for Road Safety Inspections are being used. for maximum effectiveness it is very important that RSA is carried out by Independent Auditors from private firms or road administration or an Audit Centre, not involved in the project design team. Auditors have to be trained and fully qualified. To assist the designers to identify potential deficiencies and develop suitable strategies to prevent these, a catalogue of design safety problems and countermeasures has been developed. It presents the most common types of design failures in a graphical and readily understood way, and also provides a range of potential solutions to these design failings. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting