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                        Federal and Tribal Lands Road Safety Audits: Case Studies


            
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                RSAs: COSTS AND BENEFITS
RSA Costs

Three main factors contribute to the cost of an RSA:

RSA Team costs.
	Design team and Owner costs.
	Costs of design changes or enhancements.The *RSA Team costs*reflect the size of the team and the time required for the RSA, which in turn are dependent on the complexity of the RSA project. For the RSAs in this case studies project, the following cost components are noted:

RSA teams consisted of groups between five and fourteen persons, but these teams were large since the RSAs served as training exercises for Federal, tribal, and state engineering staff, and also because there are multiple owners in some cases. Without the need for training, the RSA teams would more typically have been composed of three to four persons.
	Opening and closing meetings, site visits, and RSA analysis sessions were conducted in a two- or three-day period for each RSA.
	Prior to and following the on-site portion of the RSA, the time required for analysis (such as analysis of collision records, and research on applicable design standards or mitigation measures) and writing the RSA report averaged about 40 man-hours.For this case studies project, additional RSA Team costs were incurred in travel and time for RSA Team leaders, who are consultants traveling from out of town. However, typical RSAs would employ local team members, and consequently entail only minor travel costs.

The *design team and owner costs*reflect the time required for staff to attend the start-up and preliminary findings meetings, and to subsequently read the RSA report and respond to its findings. In addition, staff time is required to compile project or site materials for the RSA team.

The final cost component is that resulting from *design changes or enhancements,*which reflect the number and complexity of the issues identified during the RSA. Suggested design changes and enhancements, listed in the Appendix (Tables A.1 through A.8) for each of the RSAs conducted for this case studies project, have focused on low-cost improvements or countermeasures where possible. Suggested improvements for the RSAs focused on improved signing and pavement markings, minor or moderate geometric changes (such as added auxiliary lanes at intersections), gateway treatments, and barrier improvements.



RSA Benefits

The primary benefits of RSAs are to be found in reduced crash costs as road safety is improved. The costs of automotive crashes are estimated by the US Department of Transportation1 as:

$3,000,000 for a traffic fatality.
	$2,290,000 for a critical injury.
	$565,000 for a severe injury.
	$175,000 for a serious injury.
	$45,000 for a moderate injury.
	$6,000 for a minor injury.Other benefits of RSAs include reduced life-cycle project costs as crashes are reduced, and the development of good safety engineering and design practices, including consideration of potential multimodal safety issues and integrating human factors issues in the design, operations, and maintenance of roads.

It is difficult to quantify the benefits of design-stage RSAs, since they aim to prevent crashes from occurring on new or improved facilities that have no crash record. However, when compared with the high cost of motor-vehicle injuries discussed above, the moderate cost of a design-stage RSA suggests that changes implemented from an RSA only need to prevent a few low- or moderate-severity crashes for an RSA to be cost effective.

The benefits of RSAs on existing roads can be more easily quantified, since pre-and post- improvement collision histories are available. As an example, the Road Improvement Demonstration Project conducted by AAA Michigan in Detroit and Grand Rapids (MI), which is based on RSAs of existing high-crash urban intersections and implementation of low-cost safety measures, has demonstrated a benefit-cost ratio of 16:1. Another example of data on the quantitative safety benefit of RSAs conducted on existing roads comes from the New York DOT, which reports a 20 to 40 percent reduction in crashes at more than 300 high-crash locations that had received surface improvements and had been treated with other low-cost safety improvements suggested by RSAs.

The South Carolina DOT RSA program has reported a positive impact on safety. Early results from four separate RSAs, following one year of results, are promising. One site, implementing four of eight suggested improvements, saw total crashes decrease 12.5 percent, resulting in an economic savings of $40,000. A second site had a 15.8 percent increase in crashes after only two of the thirteen suggestions for improvements were incorporated. A third site, implementing all nine suggested improvements, saw a reduction of 60 percent in fatalities, resulting in an economic savings of $3,660,000. Finally, a fourth location, implementing 25 of the 37 suggested safety improvements, had a 23.4 percent reduction in crashes, resulting in an economic savings of $147,000.

The most objective and most often-cited study of the benefits of RSAs, conducted in Surrey County, United Kingdom, compared fatal and injury crash reductions at 19 assessed highway projects to those at 19 highway projects for which RSAs were not conducted. It found that, while the average yearly fatal and injury crash frequency at the RSA sites had dropped by 1.25 crashes per year (an average reduction from 2.08 to 0.83 crashes per year), the average yearly fatal and injury crash frequency at the sites that were not assessed had dropped by only 0.26 crashes per year (an average reduction from 2.6 to 2.34 crashes per year). This suggests that RSAs of highway projects make them almost five times more effective in reducing fatal and injury crashes.

Other major studies from the United Kingdom, Denmark, New Zealand, and Jordan quantify the benefits of RSAs in different ways. However, all report that RSAs are relatively inexpensive to conduct and are highly cost effective in identifying safety enhancements.
      
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                Book:Federal and Tribal Lands Road Safety Audits: Case Studies
              INTRODUCTION
                THE RSA PROCESS
                RSAs: COSTS AND BENEFITS
                CONCLUSION
                APPENDIX A CASE STUDY RSAs U.S. DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION

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