ARE ROADS SAFE ENOUGH

Drivers do not buy cars which have not had a series of basic safety test and checks, but they do not yet expect highways to be produced to similar safety standards. That is why the concept of safety audit, which this article discusses, has an important part to play in road design and construction. The first safety audits in the UK were conducted in the mid-1980s, when local authority safety engineers became concerned that they were being asked to investigate crashes on new roads like those that they were trying to engineer out of existing roads. Common mistakes in carriageway layout, position and type of street furniture, signing and marking, and surfacing materials, and a lack of facilities for vulnerable road users such as pedestrians and cyclists, were being made again and again. By 1990, safety audit was required on national roads in the UK, and it soon spread to many other countries. But its use is still uncommon, and most road schemes around the world are never given any form of customer-oriented safety check. Most safety audit procedures (1) examine the outline design before funds are committed; (2) examine the detailed design before letting the construction contract; and (3) check the completed scheme on site before opening it to road users. Many authorities now advocate a fourth feasibility stage to ensure intrinsic safety or a post-opening audit of the road's safe operation in traffic.