Abstract:
Abstract
In November 2008 the European Parliament and the Council of the EU have adopted a Directive
aimed at the improvement of road infrastructures safety management within the Trans-European
Road Network, that can also be extended as a set of good practices to other national networks,
through the implementation by the Member States of procedures relating to: “road safety impact
assessments” and “road safety audits” of infrastructure projects; the “safety ranking and
management” of the road network in operation; “safety inspections”; and “data management”.
In the same Directive it is stated that research activity and the dissemination of its results play an
important role in this process. At the Transportation Department of the National Laboratory for Civil
Engineering (LNEC), in Portugal, a special attention has been given, over the time, to these and other
safety related research topics. In this context, the participation in European projects and
collaboration agreements with national road and traffic administrations, have given a support to the
studies carried out and a practical ground for the application of their results.
Based upon this experience, in this paper a concise description is made on the main aspects of the
EU Directive and on their relation with research studies, either already completed or on-going, at the
European and national levels, showing how they can provide relevant contributions to the overall
objective of a continuous improvement of road traffic safety.
