What are road safety audits?

What are Road Safety Audits?

Two ways of improving safety:

• Accident reduction(reactive)

• Accident prevention(proactive)

Accident prevention:

For example road safety audits

• Use knowledge or research to reduce the risk (potential) for accidents to occur prior to the road being built, reconstructed or upgraded

Advantages to this approach

• not necessary for build-up of extraordinary accident history before locations can be identified and prevention can be taken

• much cheaper changing plans than implementing countermeasures on a road open to the public

Definition of road safety audit:

“A formal systematic process for the examination of new road projects by an independent and qualified audit team, in order to detect any defects likely to result in a crash”

Commission audit

Approve Audit Team

Compile / Issue Audit

Assess Audit Brief (and associated

Information)

Compile / Issue the

Audit Report

Review Problems

and Recommen

dations

Compile / Issue

Exception Report

Undertake Site Visit

Implement Design

Changes

Formal systematic process

Independent audit team

Auditor

Designer

Qualified audit team

Year 1 Year 3Year 2 Year 4

Road safety engineering or crash investigation experienceSTART

Qualify as Observer

4-day road safety audit

course

Qualify as Member

3 road safety audits as observer (2 @ design stage)

Qualify as Leader

2 days CPD

Year 5

On-going

5-day Road safety

engineering or crash inv

course

Road design, construction or traffic engineering experience

2 days CPD2 days CPD2 days CPD 2 days CPD

5 road safety audits as member (3 @ design stage)

On-going

Defects likely to result in a crash

From a road users point of view

An audit is not:

• An opportunity to redesign

• A design check

• A crash investigation

Session 2: Slide 18

• Preliminary design stage (Stage 1)

• Draft design stage (Stage 2)

• Detailed design stage (Stage 3)

• Work Zone traffic management stage (Stage 4)

• Pre-opening stage (Stage 5)

• Other types of audit:

Road safety appraisal (audits of existing roads)

Land use developments audits

Specific Road User Groups

Audit stages

Session 2: Slide 25

Audit Team

• Team Leader

• Team Members

Assisting Audit Team

• Observers

• Specialist advisor (if required)

• Local police

• Maintaining authority

• Specific road user group expert

Why are audits necessary?

But we already have standards!

Standards …..

may be old and no longer relevant

Individual road elements …..

designed to standard, may be quite safe in isolation but may, when combined with other standard elements, be unsafe!

A junction on the outside of a horizontal curve provides good site distance from the side road

Source: AUSTROADS Safety Audit (1994)

Session 2: Slide 38

A deceleration lane allows vehicles to slow down off the main running lane, reducing the

risk of rear-end shunts

Session 2: Slide 39

But if these two elements are combined, they can result in left-turning vehicles hiding

following vehicles, increasing the risk of side-impact accidents

Session 2: Slide 40

Standards …..

are not only developed for safety but also for other reasons, e.g. traffic capacity and to keep costs low (often conflicting with safety!)

Standards …..

usually cover general or common situations, not all situations

Cost or space constraints …..

Design of road environment ..

may differ from how drivers actually perceive them, especially

Audits are not expensive

• Road Safety Audits are only a small part of design and project costs: 1% to 2% of total design costs

0.5% of total project costs

• Cost of Safety Audits consist of: Small cost to undertake audits

Short delay in project

Small cost of redesign

Small cost of modifying construction

• Design changes cost a few 1,000 Rand

• But construction changes cost a few 100,000 Rand!!

• So need to do audits at the beginning of the project!

Benefits of audits

• Improving design standards and procedures through the feedback

• Enhancing consistency of the road network

• Ensuring more explicit provision is made for safety needs of vulnerable road users

• Reducing the number and severity of crashes

• Reducing the overall cost of schemes (easier and cheaper to correct projects on drawing board than after implementation)

Scientific basis

• Audited sites could save at least one casualty per site per year (Surrey)

• Average the cost of rectifying sites aftera project was constructed was R150,000 more than the cost of implementing audit recommendations (during design and/or construction): (TRL)

• Systematic application of road safety audit procedures across Britain was estimated to have the potential to reduce personal injury crashes by 3% (Sabey)

• First year rate return (FYRR) of audits are between 149 % and 600 % (Denmark & UK)

Questions?

What are road safety audits?

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