Improving road safety has been the key objective for road authorities for many years. In recent years many of them have adopted the principles of Vision Zero; the concept of self-explaining roads and forgiving roadsides. As new research findings are published, differing theories evolve and road safety visions change. Common implementation strategies are however missing. The purpose of this final report is to bring together the findings and recommendations of the projects, based on project final reports or other summaries received from the project coordinators and conclusions from the two workshops carried out at the conference. The aim of the programme is to improve traffic safety by increasing the awareness and acceptance of road authorities to implement joint road safety solutions following the concepts of self-explaining roads and forgiving roadsides, taking human factors and human tolerance into consideration. The programme was based on three objectives: A) Development of evaluation tools, B) Assessment of forgiving road safety measures and C) Comparison and Implementation of approaches of self-explaining roads. The objectives were developed with the concepts of forgiving roadsides and self-explaining roads in mind, focusing on rural roads combined with the most substantive issues of the European road safety goals and the Vision Zero. The analysis of road design for self-explaining roads or forgiving roadsides should look for cost-effective solutions in order to reduce fatal accidents as quickly as possible. The report is divided into three parts as follows: Part 1: Presentation of projects Project facts, background and objectives, chosen methodologies, outcomes Part 2: Outcome of workshops at the final conference Workshop 1 Self-explaining roads: ERASER, RISMET and SPACE Workshop 2 Forgiving roadsides: IRDES and EuRSI Part 3: Conclusions Synergies of the 5 projects Recommendations for Implementation Recommendations for further research needs. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting