Tools for road infrastructure safety management in Poland

Abstract

Road safety can be improved by implementing principles of road safety infrastructure management (RIS) on the network of European roads as adopted in the Directive. The document recommends that member states should use tried and tested tools for road safety management such as: road safety impact assessment (RIA), road safety audit (RSA), safety management on existing road networks including road safety ranking (RSM) and road safety inspection (RSI). The objective of the methods is to help road authorities to take rational decisions in the area of road safety and road infrastructure safety and understand the consequences occurring in the particular phases of road life cycle. To help with assessing the impact of a road project on the safety of related roads, a method was developed for long-term forecasts of accidents and accident cost estimation as well as a risk classification to identify risks that are not acceptable risks. With regard to road safety audits and road safety inspection, a set of principles was developed to identify risks and the basic classification of mistakes and omissions.