Paper presented at the 31st Annual Southern African Transport Conference 9-12 July 2012 "Getting Southern Africa to Work", CSIR International Convention Centre, Pretoria, South Africa.
Road safety auditing is a process to pro-actively review the potential for road safety
improvements on any road or transportation project, whether in a design phase or as an
existing road facility. The process is based on the critical assessment of the project
features as they would be experienced by any road user. ARRB Group Ltd (ARRB, the
Australian Road Research Board) in co-operation with Parsons International Ltd (PIL)
conducted road safety audits on a selection of the internal road network of the Municipality of Abu Dhabi City, UAE.
The project was conducted in 2011 and consisted of various tasks:
• Conducting a network level road safety assessment of 2 600 carriageway-km of
roads and streets to identify high risk areas;
• Conducting road safety audits on a sub-set of roads and streets of about
300 carriageway-km forming part of the high risk areas;
• Recommending remedial measures;
• Developing program level cost estimates for remedial treatments
• Prioritising remedial treatments based on their cost effectiveness
The network level road safety assessment had been conducted using the Hawkeye video survey system and the risk levels of different sections of the network determined by
utilizing the proprietary NetRisk software. Available crash information was superimposed
on maps showing the network risk levels. In this manner a clear impression could be
formed of those areas where safety concerns existed, based on the pro-active review of
road features in the road safety assessment process in coordination with the reactive
process of crash analysis.
Road safety audits were then conducted on the areas with the highest risk levels. The
audits were undertaken by combining traditional on-site reviews with a comprehensive
geo-referenced inventory of road safety problems extracted from the video surveys.
A first order estimate of the cost of the works to remedy the safety concerns on the 300
carriageway-km of audited roads and streets indicated a programme value in excess of
USD 93,5Million1 (at 2011 prices).
