Country Report--Denmark: Status Report, Denmark 2005

The Danish guidelines for geometric design of roads and paths in rural areas are guided by a basic philosophy of designing and establishing roads so that desired speed is not only a design parameter stipulated by road planners, but also speed that road users experience as most natural and most comfortable. Denmark is an old agricultural country with intensively farmed land and short distances between farms and between towns. The highly developed industry of modern Danish society is dispersed across country so that road network is dense and multifunctional. Therefore, it is difficult to establish a clear and unambiguous functional road classification. Even motorways serve as access roads in some places. Therefore, it has been necessary to choose a comparatively simple functional classification and to seek to increase road safety by a supporting speed classification. In order to ensure that road users actually drive at speed desired by road planners, Road Directorate has worked on a self-explaining road concept over last couple of years. The self-explaining road must be designed so that all geometric elements, road markings and road equipment work together as one unit, giving road users an unambiguous impression of who else is on road (without being visible all time), geometric design and what speed behavior is safe. At same time, road and road environment are as far as possible established in such a way that if road user runs off road by accident, consequence for him/her and other road users is minimized. This is called the forgiving road.