Road Safety Audits definition

It is important that a Road Safety Audit is carried out independently from the design team. This will ensure that the Audit Team is not influenced by familiarity with the project. The definition of independence can vary between clients. Some clients will accept an Audit Team from the same organisation as the design team while others insist on complete independence. 

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. 

There is almost certainly no definitive collision research into this topic, as the STATS19 form used by the police to record injury collisions does not report on the visual acuity of a pedestrian involved in a collision, and does not record details of any tactile paving present. The Road Safety Audit is therefore more likely to be an intuitive approach in which the safety needs of each user are role played in relation to likely conflicts that could arise. The need to audit what you see rather than audit based on stereotypical or hypothetical concerns is really important here. 

The term is not used in ISO 26262, but does not mean any contradiction Those ideas and terms are illustrated in ISO 26262 in a different or similar context. For example coexistence of software of different criticality (different ASIL) doesn t see a risk if functions are similar but if these functions can influence each other negatively. Furthermore, it is important to mention that ISO 26262 uses and defines the terms validate, verify, analyze, audit, assessment and review in context of functional safety for road vehicles differentiy. These examples also show that requirements, terms or definitions within ISO 26262, depending from which activity or context they are used, can lead to different interpretations or meanings. 

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