Road Safety Audit

Time spent: 9 hrs

Hossein Naraghi
CE 590 Special Topics
Safety
June 2003
 Road Safety Audit
 A complementary action to accident
reduction is accident prevention
 The aim is to ensure that the road system
is safe
 One of the key component of accident
prevention involves the use of safety
checks or safety audits
• The focus is on the design of new road and
traffic schemes
• Sometimes the focus is on the existing roadway
Definition and objectives of
road safety audit
 Significant improvements in safety
are not automatic safety must be
 Systematically designed into each
project
 Highway designers must seek safety
opportunities specific to each project and
apply sound safety and traffic
engineering principles
 This process which aimed at preventive
road safety engineering is the road
safety audit
 Definition and objectives of
road safety audit (continued)
 The Roads and Traffic Authority of
New South Wales describe safety
audit as
 “A means of checking the design,
implementation and operation of road
projects against a set of safety principles
as a means of accident prevention and
treatment”
 Essential elements
 The essential elements of the road
safety audit process are
 A formal process and not an informal
check
 An independent process

 Carried out by someone with appropriate

experience and training
 Restricted to road safety issues
 Safety audit objectives
 The objective of the road safety audit is to
 Minimize the risk and severity of road
accidents that might be affected by the
road project at the site or nearby network
 Minimize the need for remedial work after
construction
 Reduce the whole-life costs of the project
 Improve the awareness of the safe design
practices by all of those involved in the
planning, design, construction and
maintenance of roads
 Safety audit objectives
(continued)
 Road safety audit can work in two ways:
1. Removing preventable crash producing
elements at the planning or design stage
• e.g. inappropriate intersection layouts
2. Mitigating the effects of remaining or
existing problems
• Inclusion of suitable accident reducing
features
• Anti-skid surfacing
• Guard fencing
• Traffic control devices
• Delineation, and etc
 Safety audit objectives
(continued)
 Highway designers and traffic engineers
have always practiced a form of safety audit
 What is important about the recent
emergence of the practice is
 Its specific incorporation as a discrete phase
 Independent of the designer
 Development of defined auditing procedures
• Followed within a road or traffic agency
• May be incorporated within an overall quality
management or quality assurance process within
the agency
 Use of road safety audit
 The concept of road safety audit
emerged initially in Britain in 1980’s
 It was one of the key response to the
Government’s target of reducing road
fatalities by one-third by the year 2000
 It was given impetus by the preparation of
two key publications
1. Road Safety Code of Good Practice
• Local Authorities Association, 1989
2. Guidelines for the Safety Audits of Highways
• Institution of Highways and Transportation, 1990
 Use of road safety audit
(continued)
 Road safety audit was made mandatory for all
national trunk roads and motorways in 1991
 In the light of the success of British experiences
the process has also adopted in
 New Zealand began the safety audit process in
1992
• From 1993, safety audit was mandatory in 20 percent
sample of State highway projects
• A comprehensive road safety audit policy has been
prepared
 The World Bank has begun to show an interest in
the safety audit subject in 1992
 Application of road safety
audit
 Road safety audit may be carried out at any
or all following stages
 Stage 1: Feasibility
• A safety audit can influence
• the scope of a project
• route choice
• selection of design standards
• impact on existing road network
• route continuity
• provisions of interchanges or intersections
• access control
• number of lanes
• route terminals, stage development, etc
 Application of road safety
audit (continued)
 Stage 2: Draft design
 This audit stage is undertaken on completion
of a draft plan or a preliminary design.
Typical considerations include
• Horizontal and vertical alignment
• Sightlines
• Intersection layouts
• Lane and shoulder width
• Super elevation
• Overtaking lanes
• Provisions for parked and stationary vehicles
• Provisions for bicyclists and pedestrians
• Effects of departures from standards and guidelines
• Safety during construction, etc
 Application of road safety
audit (continued)
 Stage 3: Detailed design
 This stage is on completion of detailed
design, normally before preparation of
contract documents, considerations include:
• Line markings
• Signing
• Delineation
• Lighting
• Intersection details
• Clearance to roadside objects
• Provision to road user groups with special requirements
• Temporary traffic management and control during
construction
 Application of road safety
audit (continued)
• Drainage
• Roadside objects
• Landscaping
• Batters
• Guard fencing, etc
 Stage 4: Pre-opening
 Prior to opening of the road to traffic
• The audit would involve driving, riding and
walking through the project to check the
adequacy for the needs of all road users
• Involve night-time inspection
• Inspection of both wet and dry conditions
 Application of road safety
audit (continued)
• It would consider similar issues raised in stage 2
and 3, but with the view of assessing their
adequacy as actually constructed
• Taking specific note of variations that might have
occurred from the plans in the process of
construction
 Stage 5: In-service
 Systematic examination of sections of the
existing road network to assess the adequacy
of the road, intersection, roadside, etc from
an explicit safety viewpoint
• This can have two applications
Application of road safety
audit (continued)
• Monitoring a new scheme after it is opened
to traffic
• i.e. in the weeks and months following the stage 4
audit
• Safety audit of an existing road network with
a view of identifying safety-related
deficiencies
 Although all 5 of the above stages can
and have been used
• In practice the first and last of these stages
are less common
 Safety audit process
 The key requirements are
 Management commitment
• Auditors are outsiders brought in to find things
wrong with their work
• Audit process brings specialists advice to the design
team
• In relation to implementation of the safety
management system in the USA, Hall 1993 was
concerned about
• Other functional units may believe that the accomplishment
of their goals are threatened by the infringement of safety
management initiatives into their territory
• Care should be taken throughout system implementation to
maintain an atmosphere of cooperation and mutual respect
among affected functional areas
 Safety audit process
(continued)
 An agreed road safety audit process
 The process aim to reduce the whole life cost
of a scheme
• Although there will be cost of audit process, it
is worthwhile if offset against the potential for
savings elsewhere
• The savings may be from
• Timely alteration to plans
• It is much cheaper to change a detail on a plan
than to replace or remove a feature once installed
• Subsequent accident prevention
• Reduction in the costs resulting from litigation
 Safety audit process
(continued)
 An independent auditor or audit team
 There must be a designated procedure
for acting upon the audit report
 If a specialist team is used, one of three
procedures can be followed
1. Prior agreement to accept safety audit
recommendations
2. Assessment of the audit report by the
client
3. Assessment of the audit report by the
designer
 Safety audit process
(continued)
 An agency developing a road safety audit
process will need to determine which of these
procedures to follow, depending upon its own
expertise and the role of safety auditing within a
wider institutional framework such as quality
management
 No matter which procedure is adopted the
key factors are as follow
 The audit team must include specialist
knowledge of road safety engineering
 Safety audit findings should be formally
documented and reported at each step of the
audit process
 Safety audit process
(continued)
 A set of checklists
 Use of checklists which show type of issues
and problems that can potentially arise at the
relevant stage of the project
 Checklists are a memory prompt
 When using checklists, it is less likely to
overlook problems
 They can not be a substitute for expertise
 One of the main benefits of checklists is that
designers can use that to audit themselves
before their work gets to the auditor
 Safety audit process
(continued)
 Training and development of expertise
 The size of the audit team depends on the size
and complexity of the project
 British experience says at the feasibility or
layout design stage, three-person team would
be suitable, Comprising
• A road safety specialist with experience in crash
investigation and safety engineering principles and
practice
• A highway design engineer
• A person with experience in safety audit, who is able
to generate discussion and assist in the procedure
 Safety audit process
(continued)
 Monitoring and evaluation
 Process of monitoring and evaluation
involves three aspects
• Procedures, problem encountered, and
effectiveness of the system
• Critical appraisal of the checklists and
their use
• Evaluation of costs and resources by
scheme type and stage
 Liability
 The Australian guidelines include a chapter
on legal issues, with following conclusion
 No case involving a road safety audit has yet
come before a court
 The legal implication must be speculative
 The predictions are not guesswork, they are
based upon well established principles of tort
law
 Safety audit will create a safer road
environment
Liability (continued)
 A major objective of litigation is encourage
safety, therefore the use of safety audit will
be encouraged by the legal system
 Roads can be made safe by different methods
• Black spot treatment
• Periodic inspection
• Adoption of higher standards of engineering
practice
• Greater allocation of funds and road safety audits
 It is for highway authorities to decide which
mix of these is best for a given project
 Audits of existing roads
 A formal program of safety audit of existing
roads can be an important component of the
overall audit process
 The aim of this stage of audit is to identify any
existing safety deficiency of design, layout, and
street furniture which are not consistent with
road’s function
 There should be consistency of standards
 Many items may be related to maintenance of the
road, therefore the benefit of the safety audit
process is to ensure that these items are placed
on the maintenance program
 Audit of development
projects
 An extension of the road safety audit in some
local authorities is to require that
development proposals be audited, these
may include
 A new commercial development which will
generate traffic on an existing road
 A residential development which involves street
construction
 In a road safety audit context, these would need
to be independently audited and a report
submitted as part of development application
 Audit of development
projects (continued)
 Audit report of development projects
may address
 The safety impact of peak period
congestion
 The generation of pedestrians and
bicyclists movements across existing roads
 The safe provision of public transportation

 Vehicular and pedestrian access to the site

Audit of development
projects (continued)
 Adequacy of parking provision from a
safety viewpoint
 Pedestrian-vehicle conflicts on and
adjacent to the site
 Type and layout of intersections and new
road alignments
 Speeds within the site

 visibility
 Effectiveness of road safety audit
 Although safety audit is relatively a new
technique, evidence is emerging that safety
audit is a cost-effective safety measure
 A formal requirement that a project be subjected
to a safety audit will very likely lead to improved
safety
 UK experience suggests that for individual
schemes perhaps one-third of crashes have the
potential for removal by safety audit
 It should be noted that the resources need to be
devoted to safety audit are in fact quite small
Effectiveness of road safety audit
(continued)
 UK experience suggests that one safety auditor is
required to cover an area experiencing 1000
casualty crashes per year
 Australian and New Zealand experience suggest
that safety audit adds 4% to road design costs
without consideration of whole life savings from
safety audit
 There have been some attempt to quantify the
benefits of safety audit
• One highway authority in Scotland, 1991 has estimated
that one-third of future accidents at road improvements
are preventable by audit, and that a one percent accident
saving per year worth $1.5 million at resource of
$100,000, a benefit:cost ratio of 15:1
 Benefits of road safety audit
 Austroads, 1994 summarizes the benefits of
road safety audit
 The possibility of crashes on the road network can
be reduced
 The severity of crashes can be reduces
 Road safety is given greater prominence in the
mind of road designers and traffic engineers
 The need for costly remedial work is reduced
 The total cost of the project to the community is
reduced