Quality Control
A major concern among agencies is their risk of tort liability. Past experience has shown that agencies are effective in limiting such risk, when they have reasonable processes in place to cover their responsibilities. The application of quality control concepts helps assure that agency efforts to manage their sign system provide protection from risk. Some aspects include:
- All methods required adequately trained personnel.
- There is the need for consensus on lighting source and placement and measurement positions. This means that the vehicles or flashlights to be used need to be standardized and calibrated.
- Measurement devices need to be calibrated to a national standard for any effective system wide assessment of traffic sign night visibility.
- Determining the optimal inspection period.
- These methods assume that a set of minimum requirements will be adopted to serve as the baseline for decisions on adequacy. The methods need to be sensitive to the speed, sign type, sign material, and other factors that may be associated with the baseline requirements.
- Methods need to be resource and context sensitive
- Procedures need to be safe for personnel & other traffic
- Effective management of information over time is required.
- Methods and procedures need to be adaptable to existing practices.
