Road Safety Videos
What is an RSA?
A road safety audit (RSA) is a formal safety performance examination of an existing or future road or intersection by an independent, multidisciplinary team. Just as crime scene investigators focus their attention on the various aspects of a specific locale, RSA teams study a section of road or an intersection from a variety of perspectives. Essentially, the goal is the same: to uncover the root causes of a situation and then suggest actions
RSA: Making Your Roads Safer
DVD Transcription
Road Safety Audits
Barry Corbin:
"Hi there. I'm Barry Corbin (man in cowboy hat). When I am not working on my ranch here, you might find me working on a television set or movie studio. I even did a one act play at the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in OKC. I was told by a director one time: 'You've got to have a couple stars to show. But, it's the supporting people that hold the whole thing together — they are the cement, the thing that make it work, the texture.' I understand that RSA teams are a lot like that. Sure, you've got the big guy or girl that designs the roads. They get a lot of the glory and praise. Just as it takes all the actors to make a big movie, it also takes all the discipline in the highway department to make a good section of roadway. Having a team of folks come in and add that extra dimension that a RSA provides is a double-dosage of safety. We need to do everything we can to be safe because we've got more traffic on the roads and people are much more of a hurry.
How do we do that? We get people to stop drinking and driving, put on their seatbelts, and slow down when they are in too much of a hurry. We've got to do more! We've got 42,000 people a year dying on the highway. That is way too many.
When I was a kid growing up in Texas, we had these great big pecan trees. In the fall, you would go around and pecans would be lying all over underneath. We'd pick some up, eat them, or carry them home to our mother to make pecan pie. But when you'd run out of them, you'd have to shake the limbs and knock them out of the tree.
That's kind of where we are with Road Safety right now. We've made things safer. We've designed better automobiles. We've got breakaway signs. We've got guardrails. We've got more people wearing their seatbelts. But we've got to do more! We've got to shake those limbs. We've got to find more ways to make the roads safe. That is going to require a new way of doing business. That is what we need."
Road Safety Audits — A New Way of Doing Business
One might argue that highway agencies have been doing this for years. After all, they automatically build safety in when they are designing highways, don't they? True enough. But is that sufficient? Try telling that to someone that has lost someone in a car crash. The death rate on our highways is still too high.
A road safety audit, referred to as a RSA, is a formal safety performance examination, existing for a future road or intersection by an independent, multi-disciplinary team. Having a team of specialists in a variety of fields gives highways a fresh look from a different perspective, and can reveal many potential areas for improvement. Also, situations change from the time a roadway was first constructed. The area around a highway can get built up in ways that were not anticipated during its design and construction. A Road Safety Audit can be conducted at any stage in the project development process, including on existing roads. Of course, it is easier to revise a plan rather than after you've poured concrete. RSA's look at safety from the road users' perspective. Typical improvements include: removal of sight distance obstructions, shoulder and lane modifications, adding or improving signs, pavement markings, delineators and barriers, consolidation of driveways, drainage improvements, and pedestrian treatments.
South Carolina DOT's RSA program has preliminarily had a positive impact on safety. Early results show reductions in crashes and fatalities between 12-60% for three of their sights. AAA Michigan conducted RSA's on 35 intersections in Detroit. Collectively, these intersections experienced a 39% decrease in total crashes, and a 56% decrease in injury crashes. 22 of those intersections exceeded a benefit cost ratio of 2-1 in two years.
So what exactly is involved in a Road Safety Audit? Let's look at the process.
First, identify the project or existing road to be audited. Next, select an interdisciplinary audit team. Third, conduct a pre-audit meeting to review project information and drawings. Fourth, perform field reviews under various conditions. Fifth, conduct audit analysis and prepare a report of the findings. Then, present audit findings to the project owner or design team. Seventh, prepare a formal response. Lastly, incorporate findings into the project as appropriate.
Road safety audits don't take a lot of time. Using in-house, independent staff, the average 3-4 person team may take 2-3 days to conduct a Road Safety Audit. If you decide to hire an outside contractor, on average, outside expertise ranges from $5,000-$15,000 per project. Several agencies have found that Road Safety Audits provide them with an additional tool for reducing their auto fatality rates.
Tom Welch, of Iowa Department of Transportation says:
"Here in the Iowa Department of Transportation, we've implemented RSA for surfacing projects. What we're providing is that our staff are now consistently looking for and implementing low cost safety improvements on Iowa roadways."
But they're not just for state maintained highways. RSA work well on local roadways, too. Collier County, Florida has found a particular need for Road Safety Audits, if for no other reason, than for the demographic makeup of their drivers.
Gene Calvert, of Collier County, Florida, says:
"Many of our motorists are vacationers, seasonal residents and elderly drivers. Their familiarity is not the same, and their response time is not the same as the younger, full time residents. That's the reason we've picked up on the idea of Road Safety Audits. We've seen how these things can benefit. We're sold on them. We've got several corridors that are being audited, and others coming up. We're even hosting one of the RSA workshops in the near future. That is how much we are committed to this. If we can save one life at an intersection, or improve safety through design revisions, the time and cost invested in a RSA will be well justified."
Bill Wright, of Clark County, Washington, says:
"I'm out here on the other side of the country, in Clark County. We're sold on them, too. A lot of emphasis is put on State transportation agencies. But much of the traffic in this country is on the local roads. We're finding out that we can make a big difference in how we handle that traffic safely with Road Safety Audits in city and county transportation agencies."
While many agencies have embraced the RSA process, some are initially concerned that Road Safety Audits will increase their agency's liability for tort actions. Norie Calvert, of the Maryland State Highway Administration, is a real proponent of the approach.
Noria Calvert says:
"The Maryland State Highway Administration believes Road Safety Audits are a valuable tool in building and maintaining a safer highway system. Maryland State Highway Administration has a policy of conducting RSA's on our roadways. Courts are reluctant to second guess the policy decisions of agencies. RSA's are the right thing to do."
Steven LaMar, Senior Litigation Counsel for the Arizona office of the Attorney General, recommends RSA's as well.
Steven LaMar says:
"If folks keep to their mission, and that is, to provide safe roads, then part of that would be having audits and checks to make sure that if we have problems, we can identify and address them. I think the most important thing to do is document what you are doing in a fairly concise and efficient way so that you can go back and explain that if you took action, why you took action. If you are exceeding the accepted standards in taking some action, there should be moralization to show that you thought about it, what the reasons were, what the standards were and why you were taking the extra step if it is an extra step. It's always better to have a document that explains exactly what the situation is in a fair, logical, truthful and factual manner. The cases that we're defending now start out with the premise that the State of Arizona is exceeding the standard of care. Arizona is one of a handful of states that has, as we describe it, stepped to the gold standard in protecting citizens against causing more accidents. That's a great way to start the debate about whether we were negligible. I believe at least, in that instance, seeing a problem, taking steps even though it wasn't required, has ended up putting us in a much better position in overall spending money on litigation costs in Arizona. That doesn't mean that we're not going to get sued. It just means we're better able to defend it."
Road Safety Audits are a new way of doing business. Making safe roads safer.
Barry Corbin says:
"Yep. That's it. That's what we need. A new way of doing business."
FHWA's Office of Highway Safety
Visit us on the web at:
http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/rsa/
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