Cost-effective infrastructure measures on rural roads

Summary:

The physical features of the road play a major role in determining the levels of mobility and safety, particularly for rural roads. Improvements in the infrastructure have the potential to create a safer travel environment, particularly a more ‘crashworthy’ environment.
 
Traditional safety models attempt to strike a balance between safety and mobility. More recent models, however, such as ‘Vision Zero’ in Sweden and ‘Sustainable Safety’ in The Netherlands view safety as the prevailing consideration.
 
These models argue that the road-transport system can only be safe when the road infrastructure is designed and operates in a way that explicitly recognises both human tolerance to violent forces and normal human error so that death and serious injuries can be prevented. Effectively, this means reducing travel speed and providing road infrastructure that is forgiving of human error.
 
Road features play a vital role in determining not only the risk of crashing but, more importantly, the severity of injuries sustained in a crash. The following features are critical: the presence of roadside hazards such as trees and poles; intersections and their design and operational features; the geometry of roads and their design speeds; and road surface conditions.
 
Rural roads, more so than their urban counterparts, contribute disproportionately to serious injury crashes, due to higher travel speeds and are therefore a high priority for infrastructure improvements.
 

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Cost-effective infrastructure measures on rural roads (PDF-fil, 1,8 MB)
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Author: Jennifer Oxley, Bruce Corben, Sjaanie Koppel, Brian Fildes,
Nisha Jacques, Mark Symmons and Ian Johnston
No. of pages: 237
Contact person: Hans Yngve Berg
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