Road Safety Auditors

The book has been written by practising Road Safety Auditors, who between them have carried out over 2000 Road Safety Audits. The aim of the book will be to teach and to inform - a guide for those commissioning Road Safety Audits, those carrying out Road Safety Audits, and for those whose schemes are being audited. 

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. 

This book attempts to bring some of this information together in a format that the Road Safety Auditor can use at a practical level. The book contains many examples of real road safety problems backed up by accident statistics, together with examples of successful solutions, again backed up by comprehensive evidence. 

Requests from Road Safety Auditors that go beyond standards can lead to conflict with designers, and arbitration may be required. This is dealt with in Chapter 3. 

Experience has shown that two people carrying out a Road Safety Audit will identify more potential safety issues than a single Road Safety Auditor. The number of items to be checked, particularly on large highway schemes, can be onerous. Large numbers of detailed scheme plans may have to be examined. In addition, it is helpful to be able to discuss possible recommendations with another Road Safety Auditor. Using a Road Safety Audit Team helps to avoid the situation in which a single Road Safety Auditor can sometimes overemphasise a particular issue because of that individual s experience or even prejudice. 

HD 19/03 has specific requirements for Road Safety Auditors training and experience requirements. Three categories of Auditors are specified Team Leader, Team Member and Observer. The requirements for each category are as follows ... 

The inclusion of training and experience requirements in the Standard was welcomed by most experienced Road Safety Auditors but caused some problems in the wider Road Safety Audit community. Although the requirements are for guidance only, clients often insist on the Road Safety Auditors complying to the letter. Some smaller local authorities initially found themselves without sufficient numbers of qualified auditors but many have now achieved compliance or are working towards it. 

In addition to the formal qualifications and experience, there are other qualities needed to be a good Road Safety Auditor. These include ... 

A number of different plans and schedules often need to be reviewed for a single highway scheme. It is imperative that all plans and other information (e.g. traffic flows, accident details, scheme brief, departures from Standard) are thoroughly examined to check for possible safety problems. Items on different plans must be checked for consistency. At later stages during the Road Safety Audit process, the Road Safety Auditor should consult reports written at previous stages of the Road Safety Audit process. These may not have been written by the same Road Safety Audit Team. 

Some Road Safety Auditors use checklists describing some of the potential safety issues, but care should be taken not to be restricted by items on the checklists. A checklist should not be used as a substitute for Road Safety Engineering experience. It is sometimes the interaction between design elements that can lead to safety problems and not one element in isolation, for example a junction on a bend on a downhill section. 

Checklists are useful for new Road Safety Auditors and can be used as an aide-memoire after the Road Safety Auditor has considered the scheme from each road useds point of view. 

The inclusion of a summary of the safety problem serves to concentrate Road Safety Auditors on the road safety problems. The summary should state simply what sort of accidents might occur. If it is difficult to write this summary there is probably no road safety problem. The summary is followed by a paragraph describing how these accidents might take place and who is at risk. 

There are two possible types of comment within an Exception Report. It may be that the client accepts an identified problem but that the recommendation cannot be implemented for various reasons. In this case, the Exception Report should describe the alternative measure to be implemented. Discussion between Road Safety Auditors and designers may help to come up with suitable alternatives. 

It is important that a copy of the Exception Report or feedback form is returned to the Road Safety Audit Team. Without some form of feedback. Road Safety Auditors are working in a vacuum and will find it difficult to improve their Road Safety Audits over time. 

In this case the Road Safety Auditors will have achieved their objective — the safety issue has been addressed, albeit with a different solution. 

While the Road Safety Auditor concentrates on road safety issues, the client or design project engineer will have to weigh up the various consequences of implementing the recommendations within the Road Safety Audit Report. Generally, the project engineer will prepare an Exception Report or at least a feedback form explaining why recommendations have been rejected. However, occasionally there will be situations where decisions are very difficult and in these cases it may be necessary to introduce a system of arbitration. 

It is important for Road Safety Auditors to try to base their comments on sound road safety experience and, where possible, to have the means to back up the recommendations from documented sources. The Road Safety Audit Standard (HD 19/03) requires the road safety problem identified to be supported by background reasoning. Although detailed background reasoning is very seldom included in the report itself, the Road Safety Auditor should bear in mind that it may be necessary to justify comments in the future. 

There are a number of reasons why the Road Safety Auditor should use control data as far as is possible. 

Control data should be used to assist Road Safety Auditors with both the identification of problems and with the recommendations for improvement. In the first part, the auditor is trying to determine who is most at risk in the new layout. In the second part, the auditor tries to suggest an improvement that has been previously demonstrated to mitigate that risk. 

Road Safety Auditors can obtain information from a variety of sources via the internet. The main question to ask is whether the information is relevant. 

UK-MoRSE is an online database set up in 2007 to provide data about road safety schemes. However, the data are not available to all Road Safety Auditors so at present is of limited use. 

This information should assist Road Safety Auditors in both the identification of safety problems and in the recommendation of possible improvements. 

Many innovative schemes are not fully researched in terms of accident implications, and Road Safety Auditors have to make... 

A Road Safety Auditor s view of roundabout design, West Midlands Region Road Safety Audit Forum, 1997... 

The government s transport policy is to encourage walking, cycling and public transport, particularly for shorter urban trips. This could have a significant short- and medium-term effect on accidents, and should be considered by Road Safety Auditors when looking at schemes. 

This chapter concentrates on the type of problems identified by experienced Road Safety Auditors at TMS Consultancy. 

In 2006, TMS completed 925 Road Safety Audits. The majority (80%) were completed on schemes in the UK, with almost all the rest in Ireland. The Road Safety Audits were carried out by 15 Road Safety Auditors working in a variety of two-person teams. 

The use of Value Engineering has increased in a number of provinces. Safety plays an important role in the deliberations. Generally, an experienced Road Safety Auditor is included on the team. Again the experience with Value Engineering has been positive for road safety. 

Within the surveyed group of senior Road Safety Auditors there is also an impression that Road Safety Audits are an interim step to a more inclusive road safety culture for future road development. The exact nature of the process that comes out of that culture remains to be seen. 

Following a road accident it is possible that a victim or claimant will make allegations against other parties involved in the accident. Occasionally, highway authorities, design consultants and Road Safety Auditors can become subject to specific allegations of breach of statutory duty or negligence. 

The Road Safety Audit Team s main dilemma is that they fail to spot something that later is shown to be a factor in an accident. The claimant may try to prove that the reasonable auditor would have identified the problem. The Road Safety Auditors are then likely to find themselves in one of the following situations. 

The safety problem was considered but thought to be a nonsafety issue by the Road Safety Auditors. 

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