Transportation Engineering

Road Safety Engineering

Lecture 27

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 Context
• “Road trauma is a result of the energy
exchange involved when a vehicle,
possessing kinetic energy, impacts another
vehicle, a roadside object, or a human. It is
an inevitable consequence of mobility.
• We can certainly take steps to minimize these
consequences, or the probability of a vehicle
being involved in a hazardous situation, but
while there is mobility it is probably
impossible to eradicate accidents.”
– Haight (1983)

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 Energy Transfer

• Kinetic Energy = ½ x mv2

Energy kJ

Speed km/h
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 International Road Death
Comparisons
• International OECD Road Safety Performance Indicators (2005) –
Fatalities per 100,000 population (Australian Transport Safety
Bureau)

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Australian Annual Road Deaths
1980 - 2010

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National Road Fatalities
2005 - 2014

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National Road Fatalities
& Speed Limits

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 National Road Fatality Trends

Over the last decade:

• Annual fatalities decreased by 28.9%
• Annual fatalities per 100,000 population decreased by
39.0%
• The rate of annual deaths per 100,000 population in 2014
was 4.92 - the lowest calendar year figure on record
• Passenger deaths decreased at fastest rate
• Motorcyclist deaths have decreased but at slower rate
• No change in bicycle deaths
• Fatality rates for all crash types (single vehicle/ multiple
vehicle/ pedestrian) reduced. Pedestrian fatalities
reduced the most.
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 National Road Fatality &
Injury Trends
Over the last decade:
• Over the decade to 2011, rates of annual hospitalised
injuries per 100,000 population increased by 6.4 per cent
to 152.6. This is 27 times the rate for fatalities.
• Around half of all deaths are from either head-on or
single vehicle run-off-road crashes.
• In 2013, major cities accounted for 36 per cent of all fatal
crashes - down from 40 per cent in 2008.
• (BTRE 2015)

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Tasmanian Annual Road Deaths
2005 - 2014

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 Road Safety Strategy

• Most governments (Federal, State and Local) have

high level Road Safety Strategies (RSS).
• These Strategies usually provide goals to reduce
road trauma by a defined amount over a specified
timeframe.
• A series of specific actions are then provided at a
high level in order to reach these goals.

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Road Safety Strategy Context

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 National Road Safety Strategy
2011-2020
• Main objective of the Strategy is to reduce the
annual road fatalities and serious injuries per
100,000 population by 30 per cent in 10 years.
• First National Road Safety Strategy was
adopted in 1992.
• Second National RSS (2001-2010) was one of
the first in the world to formally adopt the Safe
Systems Approach.

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 National Road Safety Strategy
• Previous RSS outcome vs goals

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Silver Bullets in Victoria

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 Road Safety Strategy
• As an example, the Victorian Government’s
Road Safety Strategy, ‘arrive alive 2008-2017’
sets out how the Victorian Government will
deliver a safer system for all road users and
make a significant reduction to road trauma.
• Key targets of Victoria’s Strategy:
– Reduced road toll by 30% by 2017
– Save an extra 100 lives a year
– Prevent 2,000 serious injuries a year and reduce
the severity of serious injuries.
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 Road Safety Strategy
• How does the Victorian Government intend to
achieve this?

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 Road Safety Strategy
• Tasmanian Road Safety Strategy:
Our Safety, Our Future
• 2010: 20% reduction in serious and
fatal crashes from 2005
• 2015: 20% reduction in serious and
fatal crashes from 2010
• 2020: 20% reduction in serious and
fatal crashes from 2015

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 Road Safety Strategy
• Road Safety Strategies utilise a number of
methods to reduce road trauma.
• Engineers are typically involved in designing
and implementing infrastructure improvements.
• Also can be involved in research and
investigation on how changes to the road
transport system can impact on road safety
outcomes.

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 Hazardous Road Location
Programs
• A Hazard Reduction Location program may be
defined as a process which aims to identify
locations within the road system which are
hazardous, in order to develop appropriate and
cost-effective treatments.
• This approach gradually sieves out accidents
and/or sites from consideration, as the analysis
focuses on those sites which have a demonstrated
priority for remedial treatment.
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 HRL Process 1
• The assignment of crashes to a database, as a sub-set firstly of
all crashes, and secondly of reported crashes. This provides the
data base for subsequent analysis.
• The identification of those sites at which the potential for crash
reduction is high.
• Diagnosis of crash patterns, to identify those sites where there
is sufficient commonality in the crash pattern to indicate that
remedial treatment may be available.

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 HRL Process 2
• Development of countermeasures aimed at reducing the
frequency or severity of crashes, and hence determining which
sites are treatable.
• Economic appraisal and development of priorities, to develop
a measure of the worth of undertaking remedial works at each
site.
• Works programming, which involves the implementation of
the most cost-effective or economically worthwhile program.

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 HRL Process Map
Objectives of Hazardous Road
Location Procedures

Identification Phase Identification of Hazardous Road

Locations

Diagnosis of Crash Problems

Investigation Phase
Selection of Countermeasures

Ranking in Priority for Treatment

Program and Preparation of Design Plans,
Implementation etc
Phase
Program and Implement
National Association
Countermeasures
of Australian State
Evaluation of Countermeasures Road Authorities,
1988
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 Development of
Countermeasures
• Some circumstances where vehicles can collide
include:
– Lines of travel are at or near right angles to one another
– cross traffic crashes
– Lines of travel are parallel but in opposing directions –
head on crashes
– Turning paths cross each other
– It is dark
– It is wet
– Lines of travel are parallel and in the same direction –
rear end and side-swipe crashes
– Vehicles leave the road and hit objects
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 Development of
Countermeasures
• Some obvious solutions:
– Control traffic so that angled crossing paths are not
available at the same time or eliminated
– Opposing flows of traffic are separated – medians and
safety barriers
– Turning movement paths are not available at the same
time – separate turning phases at signals
– Lighting
– Skid resistant surfaces
– Line marking
– Delineation of traffic lanes
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 Development of
Countermeasures
• Road crashes are rare and random events that
require statistical techniques to determine the
probability that any changes to crash patterns are
due to a countermeasure or due to chance.

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 DCA Codes

Also DCA Codes in Austroads

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 High Speed
Intersection
Countermeasures

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 High Speed
Intersection
Countermeasures

Low Speed
Intersections
Countermeasures

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 Low Speed
Intersection
Countermeasures

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 Countermeasure Effectiveness
• Also reduction rates for:
– Mid block locations
– Pedestrian treatments
– Railway Crossings
– Urban Treatments
– Rural treatments

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 Assessment of Countermeasures
• Potential projects to treat hazardous road locations
are selected.
• These must be ranked to select those that represent
the best collective outcome in terms of the goals
of the program.
• For example, Federal Black Spot Programs have
an objective to maximise the benefits to the
community by reducing the cost of road crashes.
This is done by ranking projects that meet a
specified criteria in terms of benefit cost ratios.
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 Countermeasure Appraisal
Techniques
• Traditional to use economic appraisal techniques.
• These require the costs and the benefits associated
with the project to be expressed in monetary terms
in order to assess the economic efficiency of
prospective investments.
• Most common methods require the whole of life
costs and benefits of a project to be determined
with reference to a base case.
• All future costs and benefits are converted to
present value using a discount rate (set by
treasury)
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 Countermeasure Appraisal
Techniques
• Discount rate is not the inflation rate. It is
intended to reflect the time value of money and is
typically around 6% to 7%.
• Economic appraisal techniques do not address the
full range of impacts that a project may have.
• This may include social and environmental
impacts.
• A number of tools are available to assist with
appraisal – Benefit Cost Ratio and Net Present
Value are most common.
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 Benefits and Costs
• Benefits of a traffic engineering or traffic
management project may include:
– Savings in road crash costs (either frequency or
severity)
– Ongoing maintenance costs
– Ongoing operational costs
– May also be road user costs such as travel time, fuel,
etc. Usually included in larger projects.
• The net annual benefits need to be forecast over
the life of the project, that will constitute a stream
of benefits that need to be summed.
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 Benefits and Costs
• Costs associated with a project may include
initial capital costs as well as ongoing
maintenance and operational costs.

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Road Safety in Design for All
Road Users ...

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Road Safety in Design for All
Road Users ...

KNE314 Transportation Engineering