Optimizing Road Safety Inspections on Rural Roads

Abstract

Road safety depends on a complex balance between all the factors that compose the road system: user, vehicle, environment, and infrastructure. Directive 2008/96/EC introduces procedures to improve the European Transport Network (TEN-T) safety, recognizing an important role for safety inspections, but focusing them on freeways and highways. This paper proposed methods and criteria useful to optimize current inspection procedures and adapt them also to secondary and local rural roads. It is often complex to determine the severity and weight of the different risk factors in this context, since deficiencies and faults can be found both in the road infrastructure and in the other components of the system. The proposed survey method was applied to a stretch of the SS7 Appia state road (Lazio, Italy). Producing video capture and using GPS sensors to geolocalize the data proved to be very useful for the compilation of the survey forms. The results showed a good consistency between the safety assessments obtained from the scoring of the inspection forms and the historical accident rate. Therefore, the proposed methodology can be a valuable aid in understanding safety concerns and in defining the improvement actions.

Systematic review, evaluation and comparison of different approaches for the implementation of road network safety analysis

“… [ 49 ] 2018 5 Injury Prediction Models for Onshore Road Network Development [ 50 ] 2019 4 Modeling Conflict Risk with Real-Time Traffic Data for Road Safety Assessment: A Copula-Based Joint Approach [ 51 ] 2022 4 Road Network Safety Screening of County Wide Road Network. The Case of The Province of Brescia (Northern Italy) [ 52 ] 2022 4 Application of a Crash-predictive Risk Assessment Model to Prioritise Road Safety Investment in Australia [ 53 ] 2016 3 Optimizing Road Safety Inspections on Rural Roads [ 54 ] 2023 3 Road Safety Analysis of High-Risk Roads: Case Study in Baja California, México [ 55 ] 2020 3 Road Safety Analysis on Achmad Yani Frontage Road Surabaya [ 56 ] 2017 2 Application and Evaluation of a Non-Accident-Based Approach to Road Safety Analysis Based on Infrastructure-Related Human Factors [ 57 ] 2022 1 Application of an Innovative Network Wide Road Safety Assessment Procedure Based on Human Factors [ 58 ] 2022 1 A Proactive Decision Support Tool for Road Safety Audit of New Highway Projects Based on Crash Modification Factors and Analytical Analysis: Algeria as a Case Study …”

“…Road safety analysis based on RSI have been considered also by Vaiana et al [ 38 ], Cafiso et al [ 43 ], Domenichini et al [ 57 ], Erieba et al [ 60 ], and Cantisani et al [ 54 ]. Vaiana et al compared the outcomes of an RSI carried out on a two-lanes two ways rural state road to the outcomes from crashes analysis.…”

“…However, as most of the RSI-based approaches, this procedure is also time consuming. Cantisani et al [ 54 ] proposed a methodology to improve currently used inspection procedures and let them be applicable also to secondary and local rural roads. They found a good consistency between the observed accident index (accident rate) and the outcomes from the inspection form.…”

Driving Behaviour Estimation System Considering the Effect of Road Geometry by Means of Deep NN and Hotelling Transform

“…The study focuses on the ANAS SpA-managed road network in the Veneto Region, for which the theoretical design speed profile, the curvature graph and the reconstruction of the road axes geometry have been obtained. In a similar way, the authors of [29] offer a technique as a useful tool for comprehending safety issues and formulating enhancements to infrastructure inspection protocols to modify them for use on secondary and country roads. The investigation was conducted on a section of the SS7 Appia state road in Lazio, Italy.…”

Indexing the Maintenance Priority of Road Safety Barriers in Urban and Peri-Urban Contexts: Application of a Ranking Methodology in Bologna, Italy

“…In recent decades, attention to road safety has been growing as a pivotal target in international and national agendas [1][2][3][4]. Due to the vast heterogeneity of road safety concerns [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16], to improve it and to achieve the ambitious goal of 'zero deaths' along roads, policies and models should be properly updated at occurrence [17,18].…”