Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Civil Engineers
Transport 153
August 2002 Issue 3
Pages 191^196
Paper 12773
Received 06/11/2001
Accepted 03/01/2002
Keywords:
codes of practice & standards/
roads & highways/safety &
hazards
Hoong-Chor Chin
Associate Professor,
Department of Civil
Engineering, National
University of Singapore
Emily Tan
Project and Development
Manager, National Safety
Council of Singapore
1. INTRODUCTION
Much has been done to influence safety on the road through
improvements in vehicle design and advances in highway
design, including development in Intelligent Transportation
Systems. On the part of highway designers and developers of
road projects, it is common that standards and guidelines are
used to generate designs that will meet acceptable safety
requirements. However, as evidenced by the occurrence of
accidents on newly-completed projects, safety deficiencies can
still be present. There are several reasons for this.
In many cases, the causes of traffic mishaps cannot be
attributed to highway design alone. Errors in judgement and
blatant disregard of traffic rules among drivers and other road
users may result in collisions on well-designed roads. Due to
physical and topographical constraints, it is also not always
possible to have a design that follows all the acceptable design
standards. In such cases, professional judgement is needed to
ascertain if the design is safe enough. Moreover, due to
changes in the road environment or developments along the
highway, safety deficiencies may also arise subsequent to the
opening of the road project. Hence, an initially well-designed
road may become unsafe with time.
In many countries, safety problems on the road are addressed
1
through black spot analysis. This requires locations with
records of a high number of accidents to be identified and
selected for safety treatment. Given budget constraints, most
highway authorities would seek a way of ranking these sites
and treat only those sites considered high on the priority list.
Transport 153 Issue 3
Chin Tan
191
EXISTING QUALITATIVE
PROCEDURE
QUANTITATIVE
ANALYSIS
Road Safety
Performance
Index
(RSPI)
Road Safety
Performance
Chart
(RSPC)
Road Safety
Performance
Rating
(RSPR)
Geometric layout
and alignment
Road control
devices
1. Lighting
2. Signs
3. Marking and
delineation
4. Other road control
devices
Physical
objects
1. Median barriers
2. Poles and other
obstructions
3. Crash barriers
4. Traffic signals
5. Roadside hazards
6. Natural features
Vulnerable
users
1. Pedestrians
2. Cyclists
3. Motorcyclists
General and
operational issues
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193
Issues to be considered
Horizontal
and vertical
alignment
Cross
section
Roadway/
intersection
layout
Visibility, SD
Treatment at
bridges and
culverts
Score
Av score
Visual illusions
35
50
40
25
28
36
Score
Description
Failure
Very Poor
Poor
Fair
Good
Excellent
Definition
There is no regard for any safety in the design/
construction of the roadway/intersection or no safety
provision is designed. It is necessary to redesign or
reconstruct this portion of the road project before
further works can be allowed to proceed.
There is general disregard of safety considerations and
severity risk is high. Urgent actions are needed to rectify
the safety deficiency.
There are some oversights in safety considerations which
may lead to moderate severity risk. Rectifications are
needed unless substantiated by a strong and valid reason.
Safety has been compromised due to site conditions or
constraints but severity risk is low. Some remedial actions
may be needed to improve safety.
There are only minor faults which may not affect safety
significantly. Rectification is not mandatory.
There is no safety problem.
194
)(
)(
)(
)( for a mean RSPI
above 30 up to 40,
)(
)(
)( for
a mean RSPI above 20 up to
30, etc.
This method of quantifying
the road safety review
process presupposes that
every issue raised is of equal
concern. Based on
information gathered from
general accident records,
additional issues may be
included in the list while
those found to be no longer
important can be deleted. The
method of computation can
be further refined by
introducing some form of
weights for each issue of
concern, although it is
recognised that they may be
difficult to establish in
practice.
3. DISCUSSION ON THE
QUANTITATIVE
APPROACH
By adopting the proposed
approach of presentation, the
relative strength and
weaknesses of the safety
performance can be seen for
each component of the road
project that is reviewed. For
example, by comparing the
RSPC of different
intersections in a road
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195
5. DISCLAIMER
The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and
do not necessarily represent the stand of any agency or
institution mentioned in the paper.
REFERENCES
1. THE INSTITUTION OF HIGHWAYS AND TRANSPORTATION.
Highway Safety Guidelines: Accident Reduction and
Prevention. IHT, London, 1990.
2. CHIN H. C. and Quek S. T. Measurement of traffic conflicts.
Safety Science, 1997, 26, No. 3, 169185.
3. AUSTROADS. Road Safety Audit. AustRoads, Melbourne,
1994.
4. DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORT. Road Safety Audits/Advice Note
HA 42/90, and Road Safety Audits/Departmental Standard
HD 19/90. London, 1990.
5. THE INSTITUTION OF HIGHWAYS AND TRANSPORTATION.
Guidelines for the Safety Audit of Highways. IHT, London,
1990.
6. THE INSTITUTION OF HIGHWAYS AND TRANSPORTATION.
Guidelines for Road Safety Audit. IHT, London, 1996.
7. TRANSIT NEW ZEALAND. Safety Audit Policy and Procedures.
Transit New Zealand, 1993.
8. OGDEN K. W. and JORDAN P. W. Road safety audit: an
overview. Proceedings of the Pacific Rim Transport
Technical Conference, Seattle, 1993.
9. PROFESSIONAL ENGINEERS ONTARIO. Report of the Highway
407 Safety Review Committee. PEO, North York, Ontario,
1997.
10. LIPINSKI M. E. and WILSON E. M. Road safety audits a
summary of current practice. Proceedings of the Conference
on Traffic Congestion and Traffic Safety in the 21st
Century. ASCE, New York, 1997, pp. 111117.
11. CARDOSO J. and BAIRRAO L. Application of Road Safety
Audits in Portugal, Safety Standards for Road Design and
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12. DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORT. Road Safety Audits
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Please email, fax or post your discussion contributions to the secretary by 31 December 2002: email: lyn.richards@ice.org.uk; fax: 44
(0)20 7799 1325; or post to Lyn Richards, Journals Department, Institution of Civil Engineers, 17 Great George Street, London SW1P
3AA.
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Chin Tan