Safe expressways: effective to meet traffic growth in Central Europe?

In the new EU-member states of Central Europe car ownership and use is increasing rapidly. Action is necessary to accommodate traffic growth in a safe way. To improve road safety an integral approach is generally considered the most effective. It consists of a total package of measures on engineering, education and enforcement plus improvement of the institutional organization and nationwide coordination. Lessons can be learned from countries with good road safety records, such as the SUN-flower countries (Sweden, United Kingdom and The Netherlands). Effective measures in some EU-countries will not automatically be the most appropriate in others. Every country needs its own tailor-made road safety plan. Nevertheless in general the realization of a nationwide highway network (plus measures to slow down traffic on underlying roads) has proven to be a successful measure to accommodate traffic growth, while it improves road safety at the same time. But it is also a very expensive measure. A national highway network can consist of expressways and motorways. Expressways are easier to implement on the short term than motorways. They are less expensive and less land consuming than motorways. By using the available budget for building expressways, it will be possible to adapt a larger part of the existing road network, than in case of building only motorways. In this way probably a better balance will be reached between investments on the one hand and road capacity and safety on the other hand. But expressways are not as safe as motorways. Therefore they should be designed carefully. Designers have to take much care of details. In Hungary experts managed to select 'quick win' safety measures on expressways: cheap and easy to implement. In this process the approach of bringing together experts with different backgrounds proved to be very effective. In a relatively short period of time shortcomings of a road became clear and quick win safety measures could be formulated (A). For the covering abstract of the conference see E217780.