Road Safety Audits

VII. Risk and other factors Different macro studies have shown that the risk of crash will increase by other factors such as poor visibility, using hand-held mobile telephones, dark conditions, wet roads and roads that are covered with snow or ice (Elvik Vaa, 2004), (Evans, 1991). There is an inverse relationship between accidents and the average gasoline prices (Hakim et al., 1991). It seems that an increase in the price of gasoline reduces the number of trips and the exposure. Similarly, there is an inverse relationship between number of accidents and the number of driving licenses delivered (Van and Wets, 2003). Moreover, the road safety audit process is shown to have a clear impact on the number of accidents (Proctor etal., 2001). However, there is lack of data concerning all these factors and they are not available in many countries. 

Proctor, S., M. Belcher, P. Cook., (2001). Practical Road. Safety Auditing, Thomas Telford Publishing, London. United Kingdom. 

Practical Road Safety Auditing. S. Proctor, M. Belcher and P. Cook. ISBN 978-0-7277-2938-5 Manual for Streets. Department for Transport. ISBN 978-0-7277-3501-0... 

The first edition of this book was published in 2001. Since that time, a number of changes have taken place in the world of Road Safety Audit. 

In Europe, the concept of Road Safety Audit is becoming more widespread with a new European Directive being introduced. This will lead to many countries carrying out Road Safety Audits for the first time. 

Worldwide, the number of countries adopting Road Safety Audit procedures and practices is increasing, especially on schemes with external funding. 

This second edition seeks to update knowledge and experience gained in carrying out Road Safety Audits since 2000 and updates advice and research from a variety of sources. 

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. 

A key part of a comprehensive road safety plan must be the safe design of our road infrastructure. Road Safety Audits provide a vital role in checking that roads have indeed been designed and built to the highest safety standards. 

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 section on International Road Safety Audits has been prepared with help from Rob Morgan in Australia and Frank Navin in the USA. 

The authors work at TMS Consultancy, an independent traffic and road safety consultancy firm, established in 1990, and based in Coventry, UK. TMS has carried out more than 7000 Road Safety Audits since 1991 and has worked throughout the UK and internationally. In addition to carrying out consulting work, TMS runs Road Safety Audit and other training courses. 

Figure D. 1 ]ack carrying out a Stage 3 Road Safety Audit on site...

Road Safety Audit is a systematic process for checking the safety of new schemes on roads. It should be based on sound safety principles and should ensure that all highways schemes operate as safely as is practicable by minimising future accident numbers and severity. 

Road Safety Audit provides road safety engineers with an opportunity to feed their experience into the highway design process. Road Safety Audit should improve the awareness of safe design practices by all concerned in the design, construction and maintenance of roads. 

Road Safety Audit considers the safety of all road users and in particular vulnerable road users such as the visually and mobility impaired, cyclists, pedestrians, equestrians, motorcyclists, children and the elderly. 

Road Safety Audit has to consider all road users... 

Road Safety Audit is not an opportunity to redesign a scheme or to make changes to design with no apparent link to a safety issue. It is not intended to be a technical check on the design elements nor a... 

Although Road Safety Audit does look at scheme design from the road user s point of view, it is not in fact a road user audit - which aims to ensure that each road user has been adequately catered for within a scheme. The Highways Agency has recently published a Standard describing how to undertake Non-Motorised User Audits. ... 

British traffic engineers first developed the idea of a Road Safety Audit as a safety check for new and improved road schemes in the early 1980s. However, the concept of a safety checking procedure within transportation had existed for over 150 years. 

The Road Safety Audit process in the UK started to gather pace when safety engineers realised that they were carrying out accident remedial schemes on relatively new roads. Adopting the principle of prevention is better than cure, they decided to use some of the safety experience they had gained from the remedial work, and design safety into new road schemes. 

Since then, the important milestones in the development of Road Safety Audit in the UK have been as follows. 

The Road Traffic Act 1988 states that in constructing new roads, [local authorities] must take such measures as appear to the authority to be appropriate to reduce the possibilities of such accidents when the roads come into use. The wording was, in fact, very similar in the 1974 Road Traffic Act. This is sometimes interpreted as a statutory basis for Road Safety Audit work. 

In 1990 a Standard and Advice Note on Road Safety Audit were introduced as part of the Design Manual for Roads and Bridges (DMRB). This made Road Safety Audit mandatory on trunk roads and motorway schemes from 1991 onwards. 

In 1990 the IHT produced guidelines on the Safety Audit of Highways, adopted by many local authorities who started to carry out Road Safety Audits on local roads. 

In 1996 the IHT Road Safety Audit guidelines were revised. 

In 2003 the Highways Agency published a Standard on Road Safety Audits. ... 

By the start of the twenty-first century, most local highway authorities in the UK were undertaking Road Safety Audits on road schemes within their areas of responsibility. 

Formal Road Safety Audit procedures have been developed in a number of countries, following the initiatives taken in the UK. 

Denmark and New Zealand and each of these countries produced detailed Road Safety Audit procedures. Since then, national and local governments in Canada, Finland, France, Greece, Hong Kong, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Peru, Singapore and the United States have developed Road Safety Audit procedures. 

Chapter 7 of this book contains more information on international Road Safety Audit procedures. 

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