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                        FHWA Road Safety Audit Guidelines


            
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                3.0 Overview of Road Safety Audit Process
Part A: Background to Road Safety Audits

3.0 Overview of Road Safety Audit Process

The purpose of this chapter is to provide the user with a general overview and understanding of the RSA process.

3.1 Essential Elements of an RSA

*Essential elements of the RSA process.*

An RSA possesses some similar qualities to other types of reviews, but to be considered an RSA , the process should contain several essential elements. They are:

Formal Examination

RSAs are a formal examination of the design components and the associated operational effects of a proposed or existing roadway from a safety perspective.

Team Review

RSAs are performed by a team (at least three auditors) who represent a variety of experience and expertise (design, traffic, maintenance, construction, safety, local officials, enforcement personnel, first-responders, human factors) specifically tailored to the project.

Independent RSA Team

The audit team members must be independent of the design team charged with the development of the original plans, or, in the case of an RSA of an existing road, the team leader should be independent of the facility owner. Nevertheless, engineering, maintenance, and other representatives of the facility owner may and should participate provided they haven't been involved in prior decisions on the project. This independence insures a fair and balanced review.

Qualified Team

The auditors must have the appropriate qualifications specific to the RSA . More detail on selecting RSA team members is provided in Section 4.2.

Focus on Road Safety Issues

The principal focus of the RSA is to identify potential road safety issues caused by the design, or by some operational aspect of the design. The RSA should not focus on issues such as standards compliance unless non-compliance is a relevant road safety issue.

Includes All Road Users

The RSA should consider all appropriate vehicle types/modes and all other potential road users (elderly drivers; pedestrians of different age groups, including children and the physically-challenged; bicyclists; commercial, recreational, and agricultural traffic, etc.).

Proactive Nature

The nature of an RSA should be proactive and not reactive. The team should consider not only safety issues demonstrated by a pattern of crash occurrence, but also circumstances under which a cause and effect link is not so clear. These include potential safety issues relating to time of day/year, weather, or situational issues that may exist or that may occur as a result of road user expectations.

Qualitative Nature

The primary products of an audit are qualitative in nature, rather than quantitative (e.g. numerical). These include lists of identified issues, assessments of relative risk, and suggested corrective measures.

Field Reviews

RSAs are much more effective when they include day and night field reviews. Even RSAs at the pre-construction stage benefit from field reviews.

3.2 Road Safety Audit and Other Processes

A Road Safety Audit (RSA) is a formal safety performance examination of an existing or future road or intersection by an independent audit team. The RSA team considers the safety of all road users, qualitatively estimates and reports on the road safety issues identified, and presents suggestions for safety improvement.

*How RSAs differ from other design and construction review processes.*

It is important to differentiate between RSAs and other review processes and tools currently in use, such as those associated with the review of safety or operations in roadway planning, design and construction projects. RSAs represent an additional tool, within the suite of tools that currently make up the road safety management system, aimed at improving safety. Review processes associated with roadway design and construction that are not substitutes for RSAs include:

Traditional Safety Reviews

Some public agencies currently include a safety review in their design process. A safety review actively seeks to identify safety concerns before a final design is established and built. This process differs from the RSA in several important aspects. While usually performed by a team, the traditional safety review team does not usually include representation from multiple disciplines. The team is often not completely independent of the design team and the review often does not result in formal review and response reports. Traditional safety reviews also miss such essential elements of RSAs as consideration of capabilities and limitations of potential road users and the importance of day/night field visits.

Traffic Impact Study

The focus of these studies is estimating the volume of traffic associated with a land development project and the impacts that traffic will have on the operation of the adjacent street and road network in terms of capacity and levels of service.

Safety Conscious Planning (SCP)

SCP is an outgrowth of the requirement in the TEA-21 legislation that "each statewide and metropolitan planning process shall provide for consideration of projects and strategies that will increase the safety and security of the transportation system for motorized and non-motorized users." The scope of SCP is too broad to be applied to a specific project.

*Existing review processes as compared to RSA .*

Interactive Highway Safety Design Model (IHSDM) Tools

The IHSDM is a set of computer software analysis tools used to evaluate the safety and operational effects of geometric design decisions. IHSDM evaluates a design and furnishes quantitative information on its predicted safety and operational performance.

It differs from RSAs in that it provides quantitative output on safety performance based on the application of the software. It lacks the qualitative aspect of RSA and is focused on optimal design solutions rather than being focused exclusively on safety. IHSDM, therefore, is a complementary tool that can provide quantitative input to RSAs during the design phase of projects.

Design Review and Prompt Lists

These are tools used by the design team to evaluate items related to: standards, details, exceptions, right-of-way issues, or cost and material estimates. The review is not conducted by an independent, multi-disciplinary team. Furthermore, these design reviews are not primarily looking for safety issues nor is there always an adequate focus on all types of road users.

Standards Compliance Reviews

This is a review to determine if all applicable standards (national, state, or local) have been met or exceeded. Compliance reviews do not always consider the safety aspects of the design for different road users. Standards compliance reviews do not exercise one of the major road safety principles inherent to RSA : "adherence to the design standards does not guarantee that the road is optimally safe".

National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA)

This Act does cover elements of public health and safety relative to any project subject to this regulation. However, the requirements of the Act do not consider the specific elements of a design as RSA would.

*Using RSA results in Value Engineering studies.*

Value Engineering Studies

Value Engineering is defined as systematic application of recognized techniques by a multi-disciplined team to identify the function of a product or service, establish a worth for that function, generate alternatives through the use of creative thinking, and provide the needed functions to accomplish the original purpose of the project, reliably, and at the lowest life-cycle cost without sacrificing safety, necessary quality, and environmental attributes of the project. Past experience does indicate that RSAs can be integrated with the value engineering method and the results of RSAs can be used in value engineering studies. However, a Value Engineering study that does not integrate an RSA is not a viable substitute for an RSA .

Quality Assurance Processes

This is a management process that is used to ensure that the quality of goods or services meets the agreed standards. Quality assurance, even when the safety aspects of a project are reviewed, is mainly checking compliance with standards and is not done by a multidisciplinary team possessing qualifications necessary to examine safety performance of a road for all road users. RSAs and quality assurance do not negate one another, but rather they may be complimentary. Specifically, quality assurance procedures may be modified to include specific requirements of RSAs, e.g., required skills and experience of the auditors, the size of the team, the RSA process to be followed, and others. More detail on selecting RSA team members is provided in Section 4.2.

3.3 Who Should Conduct Road Safety Audits?

The level of success that can be achieved in using the RSA process is highly dependent on the characteristics of the auditors, both individually and as a team. By possessing certain knowledge, skills, experience, and attitudes, the team will be able to review project data critically, get the most from field visits, and engage in the kind of dialogue that leads to the identification of road safety issues.

Experience with RSAs in the United States to date has shown that there are many workable variations to the RSA process and, accordingly, many questions arise as to who should be involved in the RSA .

*Making RSAs successful*

Specific issues to be addressed include the following: successful.

Number of Team Members

One of the benefits of the RSA process is the synergy created by the members of the audit team. The knowledge and experience of the team as a whole are greater than the sum of these attributes as vested in the individual members, so the process benefits from being conducted by a team. But what size team is optimal? While three members may be adequate for some project types, that number may not be sufficient for larger, more complex projects or those requiring specific expertise. The best practice is to have the smallest team that brings all of the necessary knowledge and experience to the process.

Team Background

The RSA will benefit from bringing different types of expertise to the process. Professional experience in the design, operations, and safety areas is very important. However, what may be more important is multidisciplinary experience. Team members possessing more than one area of specialty (e.g., design and operations) should be more valued than members possessing only one skill.

Independence of the RSA Team

RSA team members may be selected from within the same public agency, but must be able to truly act independently of the team generating the original designs.

**Team Leadership:**

Within the team, there should be a leader who is thoroughly knowledgeable in the RSA process, capable of directing the other team members, and able to communicate effectively with the design team and the project owner.

Photo of cyclist traveling on roadway.

**Local Representatives:**

An audit team should have an individual knowledgeable of the project location. Representatives of State or local law enforcement or leaders of local organizations (a traffic safety task force or bicycle/pedestrian committee) may be considered for this role, or may be used as a special resource while not necessarily being a team member.

3.4 Roles and Responsibilities

There are varying roles and responsibilities for all of the parties involved in the RSA . Further, these roles and responsibilities can vary significantly from one organization to another. The following descriptions give general guidance on the roles and responsibilities of each RSA team member.

Project Owner

The project owner is a representative of the State or local highway (or road) department. For the RSA process to work, there has to be the highest level of commitment from the top administration within the public agency. This sense of commitment must permeate throughout the public agency and demonstrate to all of the parties involved that RSAs are a permanent feature of the public agency's roadway safety program. Without this organizational endorsement, the integrity of the process can be undermined, making the RSA less of a safety tool to be used and more of an organizational hurdle to be overcome.

The project owner must also work to make sure that key RSA features, such as the formality of the RSA , the use of a qualified, independent multi-disciplinary RSA team, and the inclusion of all road users are part of and remain part of all RSAs.

In managing the RSA process, the project owner must set up ground rules regarding how information requests will be handled, how meetings and other activities of the RSA team mesh with the overall timetable for the development of the project, and how identified problems and suggested solutions are presented to the design team. Further, he or she must create an environment that avoids possible conflicts between the design team and the audit team and establish how conflicts, if they occur, will be arbitrated.

Design Team Leader

*Role of the RSA design team leader.*

The design team leader may have the most important role in that he or she is the single point of contact for the public agency for all activities related to the design and RSA process.

To perform well in this role the design team leader must balance the activities of the design team with the information requirements and the final output of the RSA team. The design team cannot think of the RSA process as some sort of "rubber stamp."

The design team leader must explain to the design team the importance of the RSA process, and he or she must assure the designers that the RSA is not being conducted to monitor performance or criticize efforts.

One of the main roles of the design team leader is to provide the proper information to the RSA team (scoping or planning the study, plans, aerial photos, environmental documents, etc.) and to arrange for objective and careful consideration of the RSA team input. Requests for information from the RSA team must be expedited, and procedures must be established regarding how the input of the RSA team will be incorporated back into the project.

*Relationship between the auditors and designers.*

RSA Team

The RSA team must fully understand the agency's RSA policies, the parameters established for their RSA , and their individual roles. Is the team responsible for identifying specific safety issues or only areas of concern? When in the road lifecycle is the RSA to be conducted and within what timeframes? Is the team to suggest potential solutions to any of the safety concerns they noted?

A well-defined role for the audit team, which is communicated to both the design team and the audit team, will smooth out the relationship between designers and auditors. Above all, the RSA team is responsible for reporting on all safety concerns they identify, even if the items may be considered controversial. This will allow the RSA process to achieve its peak effectiveness.

3.5 Which Roads or Projects Should be Audited, and When?

*Applying RSAs early in the planning and preliminary design of roads.*

RSAs may be conducted practically at every stage in the lifecycle of a transportation facility. RSAs applied early in the planning and preliminary (functional) design of roads offer the greatest opportunity for beneficial influence. As a design progresses into detailed design and construction, changes that may improve safety performance typically become more difficult, costly, and time-consuming to implement.

Exhibit 3.1 illustrates a method of grouping RSAs by phase (pre-construction, construction, and post-construction) and by stage (planning, preliminary design, etc.). Parts B and C of this guideline have been structured according to this grouping. An overview of each RSA phase and stage follows.

Pre-construction Phase Road Safety Audits

Pre-construction RSAs are performed at those points in the project lifecycle before the construction of the facility begins. In this phase, changes may still be made with limited delay to the project and with less expense. There are three RSAs that may be conducted during this phase. These include:

Planning (feasibility) RSAs.
	Preliminary design RSAs (functional design RSAs).
	Detailed design RSAs (final design RSAs).Planning Stage

Planning projects, by their nature, have little information about the details of the design. A preliminary layout or route may be available along with information about the basic design issues (e.g., functional classification, general intersection configuration).

Despite limited information, at this stage there may be significant opportunity to incorporate safety enhancements into the design at the lowest cost. The audit team may give special consideration to issues such as the accommodation of all user groups, design consistency, and operational features.

The RSA suggestions at this stage may include major changes such as different route options, cross-section options, changes to spacing of intersections/interchanges, construction stages, pedestrian/bicycle routing and facility options.

**Exhibit 3.1**

Diagram of types of Road Safety Audits Grouped by Phase and Stage.  The diagram illustrates a method of grouping Road Safety Audits

RSAs by phase and by stage. The first RSA phase illustrated is the Pre-construction Road Safety Audits. This phase is made up of the Planning, Preliminary Design and Detailed Design RSA stages. The second RSA phase illustrated is the Construction Road Safety Audits. This phase is made up of the Work Zone, Construction and Pre-Opening RSA stages. The third RSA phase illustrated is the Post-construction Road Safety Audits. This phase is made up of the Existing Roads RSA stage. The forth and final RSA phase illustrated is the Development Project Road Safety Audits. This phase is made up of the Land Use Development RSA stage. The diagram also illustrates that RSAs applied early in the planning and preliminary design of roads offer the greatest opportunity for beneficial influence. As a design progresses into detailed design and construction, changes that may improve safety performance typically become more difficult, costly and time-consuming to implement."

*Identifying opportunities to improve safety at different project stages.*

Preliminary Design Stage RSA (plans 30-40% complete)

At this stage plans are 30-40% complete, and projects should have sufficient information about the details of the design, such as alignment and grade or lane and shoulder widths, so that the auditors may begin to identify critical design details and make suggestions regarding safety. The primary design stage is covered in more detail in Section 5.1.

While fundamental decisions concerning route choices are already made at this stage, substantive safety improvements may still be made without significant costs or delays. The RSA suggestions may include: changes to access points, horizontal and/or vertical alignments, provision of a median, lane and shoulder width, provision of bicycle lanes and sidewalks, channelization, landscaping, lighting, etc.

Detailed Design Stage RSA (plans 60-80% complete)

At this stage, plans are 60-80% complete. This is a critical stage as this is the audit team's last opportunity to review the design before it is finalized and construction begins. Right-of-way acquisition has likely commenced, so it is vital that the RSA is thorough. Efforts to undertake major physical changes in the design at this stage may be both time-consuming and expensive, and may delay project tendering. The RSA suggestions may include changes to signs, delineation and road marking, traffic signal placement/operation, roadside safety hardware (types and placement), raised channelization, landscaping, lighting etc.

Construction Phase Road Safety Audits

Construction RSAs are generally performed during preparations for construction, during actual construction, and during the pre-opening period. In this phase, the audit team may actually view the project as-built, along with the final detailed plans, so that their review may be more comprehensive. There are three RSAs that may be conducted during this phase, as follows:

Work Zone Traffic Control Plan RSAs.
	Changes in Design During Construction RSAs.
	Pre-opening RSAs.RSA of Work Zone Traffic Control Plan

RSAs may be conducted to ensure that safety is adequately considered in the Maintenance of Traffic Plan and the Work Zone Traffic Control Plan. This RSA could be accomplished before the project is tendered to construction, before the work zone is open to traffic, and/or after it is open.

When performing this type of RSA , the team needs to be mindful of several issues. They must evaluate the safety of all temporary roadways and transition areas. They should consider the appropriateness of all traffic control devices and be cognizant of any conflicting information given to the road users by the permanent and/or the temporary traffic controls. Further, they need to think about the other road users besides passenger automobile operators (e.g., pedestrians, including the disabled; bicyclists; large trucks; school buses; etc.) because work areas often fail to properly accommodate users from these other groups.

RSA of Changes in Design During Construction Stage

RSAs conducted at this stage relate to situations where a construction process leads to identification of unforeseen construction problems or cost saving design alternatives that may not have been obvious during the design process. Some of the changes may have a bearing on safety and may need to undergo an RSA .

Pre-Opening Stage RSA

*Considerations with Pre-opening RSAs.*

Photo of a new intersection which is closed off to vehicles.

These RSAs are similar in nature to detailed design RSAs in that they offer another opportunity for the team to consider the safety aspects of the design before the facility is opened to the public. It should be noted that this is the first time the reviewers will be able to actually see and drive (walk, bicycle) the facility in its finished state instead of relying on the design plans. This field review must be comprehensive and thorough. The RSA suggestions will likely focus on changes to illumination, signs, delineation, pavement markings, roadside barriers, removal of fixed object hazards or minor structural changes (e.g., addition of a wheelchair ramp). Yet even minor changes to the road facility may significantly reduce safety risk at a minimal cost.

Post-construction Phase Road Safety Audits

RSAs of existing roads are conducted on a previously opened roadway or intersection. This type of RSA is somewhat different from those conducted during the pre-construction or construction phases. The procedure used for conducting an RSA of an existing road uses different project data; specifically, if plans are reviewed, they should be "as built" plans. By performing a day and night review the audit team will be able to observe how road users are interacting with the road facility.

Near the conclusion of the field review portion of a post-construction phase RSA , or even as a part of reviewing project information, some public agencies encourage the review of existing crash data. However, an RSA of existing roads is intended to be different than a traditional analysis of a high crash location. See Section 7.1 for more detail on RSAs of existing roads.

The real objective for this type of RSA is to identify road safety issues for different road users that might result in a crash given the operational characteristics of the road in question. For this reason, RSAs of existing roads are proactive. Available crash data are used to validate RSA results and make sure that existing safety problems are not overlooked. RSAs of existing roads may be conducted even if crash data are unavailable.

Development Project Phase Road Safety Audits

Development project RSAs may be conducted on industrial, commercial, or residential land use development projects that may have an impact on the characteristics of the existing adjacent roads. Since development projects have a great potential to change the traffic volumes, traffic patterns, vehicle mix, road environment, or user perception of the road, a development RSA would consider the internal layout of the new development as well as impacts to the existing road network.
      
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                    4.0 Conducting Road Safety Audits ›
                
                Book:FHWA Road Safety Audit Guidelines
              Preface
                1.0 Introduction
                2.0 Implementation of Road Safety Audits
                3.0 Overview of Road Safety Audit Process
                4.0 Conducting Road Safety Audits
                5.0 Pre-construction Road Safety Audits
                6.0 Construction Road Safety Audits
                7.0 Post-construction Road Safety Audits
                8.0 Road Safety Audit Prompt Lists
                Prompt List
                Pre-construction Phase: Prompt List 1 – Planning Stage Audit
                Pre-construction Phase: Prompt List 2 – Preliminary Design Stage Audit
                Pre-construction Phase: Prompt List 3 – Final Design Stage Audit
                Construction Phase: Prompt List 4 – Work Zone Traffic Control Plan Audit
                Construction Phase: Prompt List 5 – Pre-Opening Stage Audit
                Post-construction Phase: Prompt List 6 – Existing Road Audit
                Development Projects: Prompt List 7 – Land Use Development Proposals Audit
                Appendix A
                Appendix B U.S. DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION

**Federal Highway Administration**

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