An Austroads and VicRoads journey Who is Austroads? Austroads - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Safe System Principles into Practice – An Austroads and VicRoads journey

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• Austroads’ purpose is to support our member organisations to

deliver an improved Australasian road transport network.

Who is Austroads?

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• VicRoads is the State Road Authority of Victoria, Australia.

Who is VicRoads?

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The Safe System approach was endorsed in Australia in 2003 by the Australian Transport Council and adopted by Austroads in 2006. The approach is now integral to road safety strategies in jurisdictions in Australia and New Zealand.

Safe System Approach

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1. Humans are fallible and will inevitably make mistakes when driving, riding or walking. 2. Despite this, road trauma should not be accepted as inevitable. No

• ne should be killed or seriously injured on our roads.

3. To prevent serious trauma, the road system must be forgiving, so that the forces of collisions do not exceed the limits that the human body can tolerate.

Safe System Principles

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Safe System Pillars

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Systems based thinking?

Infrastructure Vehicles Speed Road Users

Crash links can be broken in many places

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• Who is at fault, who is responsible?
• The driver → the System designer and operator
• What is the risk?
• Accidents → Fatal and Serios Injury (harm)
• What is the objective?
• An optimal and economic number of fatalities and serious injuries

→ the virtual elimination of deaths and serious injuries.

How is the Safe System approach different?

Extreme:

• Excessive speeding
• Alcohol and drugs
• Deliberate risk taking

Who is at fault?

Illegal:

• Falling asleep / fatigue
• Distraction
• Fail to stop OR give way
• Driving too fast for the

conditions Accidental:

• Lane departure &
• vercorrection
• Evasive manoeuvre
• Lack of driver skill

System 87% Illegal 10% Extreme 3%

Rural

System 74% Illegal 17% Extreme 9%

Metro

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• Traditionally, engineers looked mainly at accident likelihood.
• The Safe System approach, encourages engineers to assess injury.

While we may not eliminate all accidents, we can minimise harm.

What is the risk?

Harm Severity

• Speed
• Angle
• Impact severity

Likelihood

• Simplify
• Recovery
• No. of hazards

Exposure

• Separation
• Route Planning

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Severity – Safe Speeds

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Severity – Safe Impact Angles

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• The virtual elimination of harm.
• To minimise harm as much as possible, more than the last job.
• In practice, we needed:
• A simple and user-friendly way to embed Safe System alignment.
• A way to assist planners, designers and project managers to

progress the Safe System approach from theory to practice.

• A tool to compare project options from a Safe System perspective.

What is the objective?

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• Austroads Safe

System Assessment Framework

• VicRoads Safe

System Assessment Guideline

• Qualitative, rather

than quantitative

Safe System Assessments

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Safe System Assessments

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Safe System Assessment - Example

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Safe System Assessment - Example

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Safe System Assessment - Example

Run-Off Road Head-On

Exposure

4 4

Likelihood

3 2

Severity

4 3 Total 48 24 Run-Off Road Head-On

Exposure

4 4

Likelihood

3 3

Severity

1 1 Total 12 12

72 vs 24

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10 20 30 40 50 60 70 Run-off-road Head-on Intersection Other Pedestrian Cyclist Motorcyclist

Safe System Score (out of 64)

Average scores of Safe System Assessments of 14 Major Projects in Victoria; worth ~$3.8 billion

Existing Conditions Orignial Design Design after SSA

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Safe System Assessments

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• Teaching Executive Leaders what to look for,
• Providing improved standards and guidelines
• Principles approach
• Removing ‘road blockers’ – e.g. clear zones
• Central barrier in narrow medians
• Wide Centre Line Treatments
• Audio Tactile Line Marking
• Providing regular technical advice,
• Providing regular information sessions – key stakeholders
• Providing new products – safety barriers for motorcyclists

Supporting Safe System in practice

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• https://austroads.com.au
• https://www.vicroads.vic.gov.au/business-and-industry/technical-

publications

• https://roadsafety.piarc.org/en/road-safety-management/safe-

system-approach

References