Low cost engineering measures for casualty reduction

Abstract

Accident occurrence is the result of the contribution of several factors associated with the traffic system, namely: road user, road environment and vehicles. English and American studies revealed that about 93% of all accidents involve human factors and nearly 33% are associated with road environment [1, 2]. Finnish studies also revealed that the road environment may lead to wrong driver behaviour, especially where road design discontinuities prevent the driver from being able to predict the environment and situations ahead [3, 4]. Road administrations have the responsibility to provide a road environment with the best equilibrium between road infrastructure demand and drivers capabilities throughout all the road life cycle [5]. A study on standardization and rationalization of low cost engineering measures (LCEM) application, aimed at road infrastructure correction and road safety improvement, was developed by the National Laboratory of Civil Engineering (LNEC) for the Portugal Roads Institute (IEP) – Road Administration. Some selected results of this study are presented in this paper [6], also including the results of some safety analysis of low cost engineering measures application on Portuguese roads.