Road Safety Audits (RSA)


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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

Introduction

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."

Closing credits:

HIGHWAYS FOR LIFE

Barry Corbin
Colorado Department of Transportation
Collier County, Florida
Clark County, Washington

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804-775-3381

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RSA Program Support

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K. Craig Allred
Transportation Specialist

720-963-3236

What's New

2009 RSA Video

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Highlights

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Sample RSA Database

Sample RSA Policies

Sample RSA Reports

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Transportation professionals employ audits to scrutinize roadways for safety issues-and reduce crashes, injuries, fatalities, and costs in the process. Artice by Lousia Ward.

RSA Peer-to-Peer Brochure
FHWA has a new peer-to-peer program for RSAs where you can receive on-site or over the phone assistance on an RSA from a peer for no charge.