RIPCORD ISEREST - Road Infrastructure Safety Protection - Core Research and Development for Road Safety in Europe
Overview
Background & policy context:
In 2001 the European Commission defined an ambitious objective in their Road Safety Policy, aiming to halve the number of fatalities in the EU15 from over 40 000 to 20 000 in 2010.
Reaching this objective means improving or implementing urgently a great variety of safety measures: besides ongoing development processes in the field of car safety (e.g. Human-Machine-Interface, driver assistance), there is also the need to exhaust the reduction potentials of road infrastructure safety measures.
Road infrastructure related safety measures offer a large potential that could be exploited in view of a significant reduction of road accidents and their consequences. Considering that most casualties occur on single carriageway rural roads, RIPCORD-ISEREST focused on road infrastructure measures for this type of road.
Objectives:
The fundamental objective of RIPCORD-ISEREST was to develop best practice guidelines based upon the current research results for:
- Road Safety Impact Assessment tools and Accident Prediction Models
- Road Design and Road Environment
- Road Safety Audit
- Road Safety Inspection
- Black Spot Management and Safety Analysis of Road Networks.
With these tools, RIPCORD-ISEREST intended to give scientific support to practitioners concerned with road design and traffic safety in Europe.
Furthermore, regarding safety interventions, secondary roads have so far had much less attention than primary roads and motorways, even though a large proportion of fatalities in rural areas occur on secondary roads. Still, design guidelines for these types of roads rarely existed within Europe. As a result, a great number of these roads are in a state which is inappropriate to modern road traffic. To fill this gap, RIPCORD-ISEREST developed a Safety Handbook for Secondary Roads.
Methodology:
The RIPCORD-ISEREST project followed five basic stages:
- A 'Road Safety Impact Assessment' provided a proposal for typical procedures applying to Road Safety Impact Assessment (RIA) and Accident Prediction Models (APM) in different settings, assessed the safety impact of changes in road networks and, within a network, changes in the design of road links and intersections or specific (dynamic) traffic management measures.
- The second Stage developed a Best Practice methodology applied to Road Design and Road Environment - to work out measures to reduce the number and severity of accidents on sections of single carriageway rural roads. In the same vein, this Stage also worked out best practice guidelines on Road Safety Audit, Road Safety Inspection, Black Spot Management, and Safety Analysis of Road Networks. These guidelines also incorporated future aspects, such as Advanced Driver Assistance Systems.
- The next Stage was concerned with the development of robust analytical tools. First, the project built a 'Best Practice Safety Information System', based on an inventory of best practice information about road safety improvement gathered from all EU Member States and also an international background. Next, the project built a Road User Behaviour Model - testing the transferability and integration of different models regarding human behaviour in road traffic, using the results of a simulator experiment.
- Using the analytical tools built in Stage 3, the project carried out the development of new analytic Safety Performance Functions for analysis and evaluation of secondary road safety. These tools were then incorporated in a GIS-based Decision Support Safety Tool - development of a practical management tool to assist road managers and other decision-makers on a regional level regarding road safety intervention measures.
- Lastly, the project conducted a field test to validate intervention strategies and measures for safety improvement on secondary roads. This allowed for the preparation of a Safety Handbook for Secondary Roads, relevant to the local, regional, national and EU level and targeted towards the achievement of a well functioning and safe secondary road system.
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