Safety effects of road design standards in Europe

Until now, road design standards and traffic regulations are a matter of national interest in Europe. As geographical, historical, psychological conditions differ, it is to be understood that road design is treated on a national level. But traffic tends to cross borders in Europe and with the increase of international traffic, international regulations and standards are becoming more expedient. From a road user perspective harmonization of design standards and traffic regulation is, and will be, of interest. Also for public authorities and network operators benefits can be of interest. However, a transition process from national standards towards international standards will be a very complex, time consuming and costly process. Due to its complexity rational decisions are required, based on cost-effectiveness considerations, but it is to be expected that political arguments will enter the arena as well. The most important organization in this respect is the European Union. This has to do with its potential, because this international organization can enforce by legal means the decisions taken. As the Maastricht' treaty on the European Union entered into force on 1 November 1993, new fields of competence were attributed to the Union. A new provision on road safety was inserted in article 75 and a whole new chapter on TransEuropean Networks (article 129) was added. Given the discussions about `subsidiarity' in the European Union the Commission started to stimulate exchange of knowledge and commissioned several studies to identify the main points of interest, also in the field of road safety and infrastructure design. Later, the European Union can (and will) evolve towards the principle actor in this field, when Member States delegate power to the Union and the Union can (and will) enforce that power with legal means. In the field of infrastructure, the EU is establishing a network, called the Trans-European Road Network (TERN). This network is formally approved by the Council of the EU (CEE, 1993), but the TERN will have to be approved once more along the newly introduced cooperation procedure. This new procedure, introduced by the Maastricht' treaty, gives more rights to the European Parliament. Meanwhile, working groups have to provide the necessary background for TERN and one of those working groups START (Standardisation of Road Typology) elaborates road design standards (START, 1994). This contribution deals with the result of a study carried out for the European Commission by the SWOV Institute for Road Safety Research, in co-operation with a number of other European institutes, and which was reported in 1994. The title of the study is: `Safety effects of road design standards' (Ruyters, Slop & Wegman (Eds.), 1994). The following aims for this study have been distinguished: -Gathering of information about existing knowledge on the design of road infrastructure elements by: a. drawing an inventory of international treaties and recommendations, with information about their legal status; b. drawing an inventory of national road design standards and the underlying knowledge. -Analysing the role safety arguments have played when road design standards were compiled. -Drawing a `best practice' for road design standards in which considerations, background information and assumptions concerning road safety have been made explicit. As a follow-up of this study a new study will start by the end of this year: SAFESTAR (Safety standards for road design and redesign). The task is: 'To develop safety standards for highway design and redesign on all classes of road, including tunnels and bridges, taking account of the proposals for technical standards made in the TERN-report.' The second part of this contribution contains a short description of the different so-called workpackages in this study