A Fresh Approach for Prioritising and Treating High Risk Curves

The Centre for Road Safety at Transport for NSW sought guidance on focussed implementation methods to decrease the number of fatal and serious crashes occurring outside of metropolitan areas on high speed roads, especially on curves. A geospatial method based on the Austroads Operating Speed Model was used to identify out-of-context curves on 37,000 km of State and Regional rural roads in NSW. Road corridors were then prioritised for treatment based on the crash record at curves along each corridor. A treatment hierarchy was also developed to ensure that a standardised approach was applied when assessing corridors for safety improvements.