Within the 6th FP European project SafetyNet, a team has worked on the development of Safety Performance Indicators (SPIs) on seven road safety related areas. These SPIs reflect the operational conditions of the road traffic system that influence the system's safety performance. SPIs were developed for the following areas: alcohol and drug-use, speeds, protection systems, daytime running lights, vehicles (passive safety), roads and trauma management. This study discusses the Safety Performance Indicators that are developed for the area 'roads'. For 'roads', two SPIs were developed that together assess the level of safety of the road network (outside cities). The first one, the 'road network SPI', deals with the functionality of the road network. The second, the 'road design SPI', assesses the safety related to the design of individual roads. The road network SPI assesses whether the right road is in the right place. First, it is determined which cities should be connected to each other and by what type of road. For thatpurpose, an internationally harmonized road categorization is proposed. This categorization consists of five road categories, ranging from highwaysto rural access roads. The road category that should be present between cities (the appropriate road category) is dependent of the sizes of the cities that the road connects. The appropriate road category is subsequently compared to the actual road category. The SPI is defined as the percentageof appropriate current road category length per road category. The road design SPI assesses the design of individual roads and is based on the EuroRAP Road Protection Score (RPS). The RPS is a measure for the protection that is provided in relation to three main accident types: run off road, head on impacts and severe impacts at intersections. EuroRAP designed a method to calculate the RPS for each road segment or route, expressed in one to four stars. The road design SPI is the distribution over one to four stars per road category. To evaluate their applicability, these SPIs were applied in a number of pilot countries, i.e. Greece, Israel, Portugal and theNetherlands. The road design SPI is only applied in the Netherlands. For the pilot area, EuroRAP RPS scores were available. It was easy to calculate the road design SPI on the basis of the RPS scores. However, it has to be noted that it is not published yet how exactly EuroRAP calculates the RPS scores on the basis of values on various road characteristics. The road network SPI was applied in all pilot countries. From these pilot projects it was concluded that it is indeed possible to apply the SPIs in practice,although the method for calculating the SPI has some limitations. In somecases, the number of inhabitants was not a good indicator of the importance of a city. A solution would be to take other factors like industrial areas and recreational areas into account. However, this would result in toocomplicated a method. For the covering abstract see ITRD E145999
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