NETSAFETY – STUDY ON A METHODOLOGY FOR NETWORK-WIDE ROAD ASSESSMENT

The Directive 1936/2019 substantially reviewed the Directive 2008/96/EC on Road Infrastructure Safety Management. So far, EU Member States limited road safety assessments mainly to the identification of road sections with high crash concentrations (ex-post); the revised Directive complements this approach by a newly introduced pro-active approach, assessing also the in-built safety of roads on the basis of their design characteristics (ex-ante).

This study intended to provide the European Commission services with up-to-date information to support the process of preparing guidance to Member States on the methodology for carrying out the systematic network-wide road safety assessments and safety ratings.

Activities encompassed: a review of practices and methodologies currently available and used, both at EU level and internationally; identification of the most relevant and suitable types of data to be retained for describing the in-built safety of the roads and for the analysis of sections of the road network on which a large number of serious crashes have occurred; development of an approach to help identifying road sections and types of counter-measures that are expected to have the biggest impact for improving road safety; development of show cases by carrying out road safety assessments for a number of road sections in every Member State.