Benefits of Road Safety Audit

The benefits of Road Safety Audit rely on the Road Safety Auditor being able to identify genuine safety problems — features within the design that if left unaltered would actually lead to accidents. The auditor must also be able to recommend solutions that will work — based on experience of similar treatments elsewhere. 

The Benefits of Road Safety Audit, paper presented at European Road Safety Conference, Malmo, September 1999... 

In 2012, the MPW commissioned an in-service Road Safety Audit project to serve as a demonstration project, highlighting the concept and process of Road Safety Audits. It was intended that the project should identify and demonstrate the benefits of Road Safety Audit and how the development and implementation of a Road Safety Audit policy and procedure in Kuwait could improve the overall level of road safety for road users. 

For most DOTs and local road agencies in the USA, Road Safety Audits are not carried out on the majority of schemes they are carried out on a relatively small percentage of the schemes that are considered most at risk from a user safety standpoint, or most able to benefit from the results of the audit. Since 2010, many state DOTs have adopted policies that integrate Road Safety Audits into their safety programmes and project development processes, although not for all projects. Some state DOTs and local agencies focus application of Road Safety Audits on resurfacing, restoration or rehabilitation (3R) projects that otherwise would not emphasise safety improvements. 

The second is a Danish cost-benefit analysis of Road Safety Audits that estimated the benefit of 13 audits to be DKK 19.9 million in the form of reduced collision costs in the first year, providing a first year rate of return of around 146%. Assuming that the measures produce a benefit lasting for 25 years, the present value of the benefit has been estimated at DKK 232 million. This is considerably more than the cost of the measures, and implies that Road Safety Audits, as they are practised in Denmark, are very cost-effective (Elvik and Vaa, 2004). 

Road Safety Audit of existing roads is not carried out in the UK. Instead, route safety studies are routinely carried out based on an analysis of historical injury accident records, and the definition of problems arising from those records. Local Safety Schemes have produced significant casualty reductions and excellent cost-benefit returns at single sites and along routes in the UK for the past 35 years. 

In the case of different options for a scheme (or different options of scheme elements) the Audit Team will simply carry out a Road Safety Audit for each option and the client will have to judge which scheme (or element) is the best to use. The Audit Reports will only point out road safety problems but will not report on any positive road safety benefits. 

It is difficult to identify the benefits of carrying out a Road Safety Audit on a scheme in a quantitative way. When an audit has been carried out, the scenarios are that either the recommendations are implemented or they are not and although the subsequent accident record can be examined, only one of the scenarios can be evaluated. It is not possible to compare how an individual scheme that has been audited could have performed had the audit not been carried out. 

Some work carried out in New Zealand suggests that the cost—benefit ratio for Road Safety Audits is of the order of 20 1. In Denmark, the first-year rate of rehun for Road Safety Audits has been estimated as over 146%. This figure was based on estimates for accident savings that might be made by introducing Road Safety Audit recommendations. 

Using current accident costs. Road Safety Audit costs identified in this chapter, and assuming the safety benefits identified by Surrey County Council, a first-year rate of return of around 600% can be estimated for this type of work. 

The success of a Road Safety Audit can be measured not only by cost-benefit analysis but also by the proportion of problems and recommendations that are accepted by a client. Road Safety Audit recommendations should be relative to the problem and the stage of the design to ensure that a high percentage of comments are not rejected. 

Do you perform safety analyses/risk assessment, e.g. road safety audits, benefit/cost analysis, in preparation of developing project scope and design for 3R projects ... 

We are often asked to describe the contribution Road Safety Audit can make to road safety. It is a difficult question to answer, as quantifying the benefits of a process that intervenes before anything is built is not easy to do. Road Safety Audit is primarily about road users -trying to answer the question Who can be hurt here, and why So in that sense it is about people - people who design schemes, people who ultimately use those schemes and, of course, the people who audit the schemes. 

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