Author(s)

FRANCISCO D. B. ALBUQUERQUE, DINA M. AWADALLA

Abstract

The roadside safety research community has placed a significant amount of effort in developing design and safety guidelines, while focus on the assessment of the proper implementation of these guidelines is lacking. Meanwhile, nearly one-third of all fatal road crashes worldwide involve single-vehicle, run-off-road (SVROR) crashes. The objective of this study is to conduct a roadside design compliance evaluation in an urban, high-density area with regards to a pre-selected benchmark. Visits were made to over 100 SVROR injury-crash locations. Almost all locations were found to be non-compliant. A lack of the minimum recommended clear zone (CZ) provision was the main cause of non-compliance, while 80% of all locations suffered from barrier misplacement. In conclusion, roadside design guidelines have been poorly implemented in the area studied, and findings indicate that more focus on proper, on-site design implementation is warranted. We are not aware of previous studies that have investigated roadside design compliance in other parts of the world. Hence, we encourage researchers to replicate this study in their respective geographical areas of interest. The authors discuss how the findings of this study may be relevant to researchers, governmental transportation agencies, roadside safety equipment suppliers, practitioners, and decision-makers.

Keywords

road safety, roadside design, compliance, urban area