Road Safety

Many people look at road safety as non-essential, but always there. What people don’t know is that everyday more than one hundred peopled are killed due to road safety, or lack thereof. Around six thousand people are injured or incalpacrated due to this. Road safety is a very important issue; it effects most people’s lives. Whether they know it or not.

Police officers have a key role in ebcouraging improved road-user behavior. The general deterrence provided by police and will promote the public perception that compliance “everywhere all the time” is the best way of avoiding penalties and improving safety. The safety of road transportations is a product of the interactions between the driver, roadway, and the vehicles. Advances in the design improved driver performance, and enhancement of the roadway have all contributed to the level of safety we presently enjoy. Many two-lane roads were constructed before current safety guidelines were developed and face problems resulting from traffic levels well beyond those anticipated. Particularly at the outskirts of urban areas. General road improvements have been found to reduce fatalities by two lives per annum per one hundred million dollars invested and provide benefit/cost ratios averaging at 3.3. As road improvememnts continue to be a need today’s growing traffic volume increases everyone’s potential exposure to accidents. Inadequate maintainence and improper installation of safety features such as guardrails and barriers are potential safety problems on all highways. An aging driver population reduced compliance with traffic regulations, higher traffic speeds, aggressive driving behavior, and demands for the road by use of pedestrians and bicyclists pose additional challenges. Road traffic safety aims to reduce the harm resulting from crashes of road vehicles. Harm from road crashes is greater than that from all other transportation models combined. Although these facts and percentages are concerns of road safety there also environmental concerns. Environmental concerns make it difficult to remove a tree or bush close to the edge of a roadway or widen lanes adjacent to streams or lakes. Consequently, there is a need to continually work to fill in gaps in knowledge and provide this information to decision-makers and persons responsible for highway safety at all levels of government. Unchecked roadsie vegetation growth can also impede motorists’ visions at intersecting and degrade the apperance of a roadside guardrail. These are all parts in road improivement. A larger one is that road traffic crashes are one of the world’s largest public health and injury prevention problems. The problem is serious because all the victims are healthy before their crashes. And while these trends are notemorthy and encouraging about forty thousand people are still being killed annually in motor vehicle crashes. Thirty percent of these crashes are from single vehicl run-off-the road crashes. In order to prevent crashes and ensure road safety, road safety products should first be tested and in accordance with NCHRP.

Though safety barriers prevent several accidents everyday, they don’t prevent them all. According to AASHTO, the average US crash rate remains that one of every eighty-four children born today will die violently in a motor vehicle crash. Also six out of every ten children will be injured in a highway crash over a lifetime, many of them more than once. In 2003 there were forty-two thousand six hundred forty-three fatalities and almost three million injuries occurred on our nation’s roads. On an average day there are one hundred seventeen fatalities a day. Thiry percent of these fatalities are by people under the age of twenty-five. These daily financial losses are over six hundred thirty million dollars.

The deaths for non-federally funded roads, which are mostly two laned, 2.3 hundred million. Crashes on these roads have more serious consequences because of narrower lanes, hazardous roadsides, steeper slopes, and sharper curves. Interstate highways are known as the “workhouse” of the highway network because of the vehicles they carry. The vehicles they carry are the most subject to fatality crashes. Twenty-three percent of the roadway and forty-five percent of the larger traffic are subject to crashes.

Crash barriers can be classified on the basis of their design and implementation. Guardrails with wire rope safety barriers are one of a few that can be spotted on roadways. All crash barriers work on similar principles. They are designed to absorb the impact of the vehicle going off track, hence helping it get on the road again, and not losing it’s balance. They’re used to prevent vehicles from hitting or falling into hazards. Such as: falling down steep slopes, into rivers, or hitting obstructions.

These events often happen when a driver has lost control of the vehicle due to excessive speed, lack of experience, or tire failure. The names used for the types of safety barriers are confusing. The most common tyoe, made of steel beams, is called guardrails or barriers in America. In Britain they’re called safety fences, and in Australia guardfences.

The reinforced concrete wall is usually called a concrete barrier. Many corporations manufacture the E-Z Barrier, a lightweight and versatile alternative to the conventional concrete barrier system. The barrier is constructed of a low-density polyethylene and resists cracking, breakdown, and ultraviolent light. At an empty weight of only one hundred twenty-five pounds, the barrier can be transported and assembled effecientlywithout using cranes or expensive machinery. Moveable barrier systems use concrete barrier sections similar to the conventional California barrier that hinges together to form a single chain that can be picked up and moved laterally across lanes by a special designed transfer machine. Crash barriers keep vehicles from going off the road and steer them safetly back onto the road. Their very presence can boost the confidence of a jittery driver on a mountain road.

Although road safety isn’t first on our political agendas and ideas it is a very important issue. Everyone doesn’t know that it is but it matters to everyone who is ever or will ever be on a roadway.