Road Safety Assessments

If the type of scheme is unlike anything introduced before, it may be better to carry out a Road Safety Assessment rather than a Road Safety Audit. The Road Safety Assessment can be written less formally than a Road Safety Audit and can include a Risk Assessment of any elements of the scheme that may give cause for concern. 

As an alternative to a formal Road Safety Audit it may be better in these circumstances for the client to commission a Road Safety Assessment. This can be more flexible in its content and style and can comment on positive road safety benefits as well as commenting on potential road safety problems. It may be possible to give advice on the safest option to choose. 

A Risk Assessment process can be used as part of a Road Safety Assessment to quantify any road safety issues identified. 

The issues raised in a Road Safety Assessment could simply be ranked as low, medium or high risk. A more objective method would be to use a Risk Assessment Matrix such as that shown in Table 9.1. A risk score of 1-3 is low risk, 4—9 is medium risk, and 12—16 is high risk. 

NY Yes Road Safety Assessments (i.e., audits) are performed. B/C analyses are performed for proposed safety enhancements/eounter measures. 

SAFETY ASSESSMENT - Perform a road safety assessment (Exhibit M7-1) as discussed in Section M7.2 of this chapter. Safety work that meets either of the following criteria is to be implemented under the multi-course requirements ... 

Australian jurisdictions have adopted Road Safety Auditing at each phase of a road project, from feasibility through to design, construction and pre-opening. Audits of existing roads are undertaken, but are typically known as Road Safety Assessments. 

The overall quality audit process was coordinated by Andy Paul at TMS Consultancy, while individual TMS Consultancy road safety engineers carried out a road safety assessment, an NMU audit and a mobility audit. 

The second point is in relation to the broader picture. Local authorities that produce design guides that depart from national standards, particularly where there are possible safety imphcations arising from the departure, need to examine the reason for that departure carefully. If there appears to be a legal breach, this is even more pertinent. It would make sense in a situation like this to make the local guideline the subject of an independent road safety assessment prior to publication. 

The issues raised in a road safety assessment could simply be ranked as iow , medium or high risk. An alternative method would be to use a risk assessment matrix such as that produced in the Institution of Highways and Transportation (IHT) Road Safety Audit guidelines and shown in Figure 10.13. 

Road safety assessments can be used to compare different options or different scheme elements. 

Conolly, R. B., and Thomas, R. S. (2007). Biologically motivated approaches to extr olation from high to low doses and the advent of systems biology The road to toxicological safety assessment. Huttum and Ecological Risk Assessment 13(1), 52-56. 

Curtis C. Maier, PhD, Head of Immunologic Toxicology, Department of Safety Assessment, GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals, 709 Swedeland Road, UE0360, King of Prussia, PA 19406, E-mail curtis.c.maier gsk.com Chapter 8.2 Nonclinical Models to Assess Respiratory Hypersensitivity Potential... 

Until now, no similar index has been developed and used in road safety issues. Most previous work in international road safely assessment has focused on one or a few indicators (as outlined in the previous chapters). Most of the macro-models compare countries road safety performance by means of risk indicators (accident rates), which are few and isolated. However, road safety represents complex phenomena, where a high number of accident factors and indicators of human, vehicle, road, enviromnent, regulation are involved. A systematic way to add up aU the potential indicators combined with weights into one index is required. This will directly compare the road safety level and progress across a large number of countries and regions worldwide. 

The last proposed dimension of RSDI is the road safety organisational index that measures how much is the cooperation between the key bodies responsible for road safety actions in the country, how much funding is spent on road safety measures. It shows the level of development of national road safety council and NGOs. It shows how far each country is from the goal of national road safely programs (if there is any). This index can be developed further and benefit from other available indices especially those used to assess the management development and organisational culture between countries. This index is not used here because of lack of data. 

The weightings in this approach are determined according to experts judgment. The principle of this approach is to submit checklists to a group of experts in road safety. They will be asked to mark the weights for different indicators and to assess the necessity of each indicator subjectively. The results (responses) will be transformed to... 

The results obtained in this study are sufficient to make me believe that RSDI gives broader picture compared to the traditional models in road safety. It is hoped that such ranking will help country to assess its road safely achievements compared to other countries. 

Another suggestion, which follows from Chapters 3 and 4, is to investigate further the given macro-models that can be used for describing/comparing road safety developments between different countries. This investigation will compare these models and determine the models with the best fit of data. It is probably useful to make these models more specific and test them with the same empirical data as used by RSDI then to assess the results of RSDI with the results of those models. 

Hampshire County Council is one authority that has adopted the Standard with some variations. For example, the County Council regularly carries out Feasibility Stage Road Safety Audits on large schemes for small schemes the site visit may be carried out by one auditor at Stage 3 the audit team assesses the need to carry out a night-time visit. 

In the case of brand new ideas being put forward, the Road Safety Auditors may be tempted to be critical to avoid any future allegations should an accident occur. The auditors may resort to auditing to the Standards rather than trying to assess the real risks. 

An important element in memorability is kill size, the number of people who either actually do, or potentially could get killed in an incident. This is why people tend to be more concerned about the safety of air or train travel, where accidents tend to cause multiple deaths, and much less about road safety which usually kills people one at a time. The cumulative numbers of deaths in a year and the probability of death per trip have a much smaller influence on the assessment of seriousness. 

---