SAFETY STANDARDS BASED ON ROAD TYPE

This contribution examines whether, in the process of assessing road safety, it is useful and feasible to locate measures which can be used as `standards' for the various road types and their intersections. The contribution restricts itself to a comparison between road types in the Netherlands. The contribution uses the number of injury accidents (casualties and fatalities respectively) per kilometre of road length, given the average number of motor vehicles which use the road type per day. It is possible to opt for an absolute drop in the accident or casualty density and/or drop in risk, in terms of setting tasks for future road networks. It is not possible to simply impose safety standards on roads and intersections. It is necessary to actually work on the safety of the infrastructure. The effects on the risk figure associated with the road type should be predictable for new countermeasures. As soon as the effects are known, they can be included in a new risk figure which can have a task setting function for the road category where the measure is to be applied on a large scale. The road safety standards imposed on the individual road categories can make a useful contribution.