Citation

Hughes J, Al Asady S, Jois R, Lenton B. Proc. Road Saf. Four Continents Conf. 2010; 15: 80-88.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, Conference Sponsor)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This paper summarizes the outcomes from a large scale road safety audit of the existing Dubai road network. The primary objective of the project was to assess and identify the potential safety risks on the whole of the existing road network and to recommend improvement works or countermeasures to reduce the safety risk to all road users. The audit has been conducted by a panel of skilled safety specialists in accordance with the Road Safety Audit Manual for Dubai (2008) and also following best practice for road safety auditing from Australia and UK. The extent of the network audited totals approximately 1,906 centre line kilometers or 6,518 lane kilometers. During the inspection, every single safety finding was described, photographed and well documented. The location of each finding has been recorded using a Global Positioning System (GPS) enabled digital camera which permits a road safety issue to be accurately located, recorded and illustrated in the road safety audit report. The study identified more than 4,125 potential safety issues distributed across the entire road network. The severity of these risks ranges from "Intolerable", where the risk is high and urgent remedial action is warranted even if the cost is high, to "Low" where the risk does not constitute major safety hazard but warrants corrective action. The outcomes of this study showed that, roadside hazards represent the major nonconformance classes on the freeway, expressway and arterials road networks and account for almost 90% of the findings. On collectors and Commercial roads, nonconformance classes such as delineation (Signs, lane marking and channelization) and pedestrian safety issues were found dominant and constitute the major parts of the safety risk findings. Suitable countermeasures to reduce the risk to road users were recommended.