RISA: A case study of the crash reduction potential of RISA on local rural roads in New Zealand
Keywords: Risk Assessment
ARSRPE
Submission Date: 2013
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Abstract
Road Infrastructure Safety Assessment (RISA) is a tool that enables Road Controlling Authorities (RCA) to undertake a Safety Assessment of their Rural Sealed Road Networks to understand the infrastructure risk to road users and therefore enable them to better focus their safety and maintenance funds. RISA was developed by NZTA led by Dr Ian Appleton between 2002 and 2006 and was fully operational between 2007 and 2011. RISA assesses field data collected by the RISA Team using a macro to identify areas for improvement that the local district / council road safety and operational engineers should focus on in order to reduce the risk to road users on their rural roads. The RISA macro was further refined to enable the RCAs to understand the risk reductions that could be gained undertaking various improvements by indicating the changed risk if certain works are undertaken on various road groupings. A case study using two NZ District Councils will be presented to assess the crash reduction potential of RISA. This research examines crash data on rural roads in the respective District Councils. The research will consider the five years of crash data preceding the RISA Team’s visit and the available crash data after the RISA Team’s visit up to the end of March 2013. The results may indicate the likely effectiveness of RISA as a road safety tool to assist rural district council road safety engineers to best manage their rural roading network within their limited budgets and whether to progress a wider study.