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Douglas W. Harwood‚ Darren J. Torbic‚ Jerry Graham‚ Midwest Research Institute
Reginald Souleyrette‚ Zachary N. Hans‚ Iowa State University CTRE
In much of Europe and Australia, modern road safety principles dictate that although human drivers may make mistakes, the highway infrastructure should minimize the risk that predictable mistakes will result in crashes, and it should be forgiving enough that when crashes do occur they will not result in permanent disability or death. To make the highway system safe, decision-makers need to be able to identify safety risks and match them up with remedies that are known to save lives. Unfortunately, there is no nationwide system in the U.S. to rate the relative risks of different roads. However, such systems do exist in Europe and Australia.
In 2004, the AAA Foundation initiated a pilot project, conducted in Iowa and Michigan, to explore the technical and political feasibility of adapting the European Road Assessment Program (EuroRAP) in the United States. EuroRAP was developed by European motoring clubs to evaluate and benchmark the relative safety of roads using metrics that incorporate historical crash data and safety-relevant roadway inventory data. Since then, the EuroRAP program has continued to thrive in Europe, with programs active to some degree in about 20 European countries. In addition, the Australians have launched AusRAP, and a new international organization called the International Road Assessment Program (iRAP) has been organized to spread the RAP concept around the globe.
A feasibility assessment and report on the initial two-state pilot project was published in the Spring of 2006. Since then, the usRAP team has continued to work in Iowa and Michigan, to track the performance of their roadway systems and document successful implementations of risk-reducing measures. Additional work has been completed in Florida and New Jersey under Phase II of the pilot program, which is described in a Phase II report released in February 2008. Phase III work to expand the pilot to Illinois, Kentucky, New Mexico, and Utah is now complete. This phase also validated the Road Protection Score (RPS) protocol that generates risk ratings based on inspection of design features typically done working off video logs. The RPS program not only rates the road segments but produces suggested engineering countermeasures based on cost-benefit analyses to lower the risks. This is particularly applicable to county and local road authorities who often don't have sufficient crash data to perform risk analyses. And, to maximize the feasibility of this effort, the AAA Foundation has discussed collaboration with the Navteq corporation, a global leader in digital map data and content.
The ultimate goal of usRAP is to transition from a pilot to a fully operational, nationwide system. All usRAP products, including new Phase III maps and information, as well as links to the European and Australian Road Assessment Programs, are available at www.usrap.us.
Last Revised on 07/01/2010
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