Friday, 22 February 2019
Austroads has published an updated edition of Guide to Road Safety Part 6: Managing Road Safety Audits.
The Guide provides guidance on the procurement, management and conduct of road safety audits. It aims to:
- inform practitioners new to road safety audit principles and concepts (especially project clients and project managers) and encourage the conduct of audits and other assessments to maximise their benefits
- ensure practitioners are aware of up‑to‑date operating environments and contexts (e.g. the Safe System approach to road safety), and recent developments in predictive risk assessments.
Part 6 emphasises the responsibilities of road and transport agencies and key players such as project managers, project sponsors and auditors to maximise alignment with Safe System principles by integrating them into the road safety audit process. This can be achieved by:
- relating possible crash forces to tolerable levels of the human body when identifying hazards and assessing fatal and serious injury risks
- categorising road safety audit findings and/or treatment options by their Safe System alignment.
The 2009 edition of Part 6 has been reissued as Guide to Road Safety Part 6A: Implementation of Road Safety Audits. It is expected that this will be a short-term measure, with a consolidation of Guide to Road Safety Part 6 and Guide to Road Safety Part 6A planned to remove any ambiguity, inconsistency or duplication in the texts. The consolidated guide will provide additional guidance on dealing with emerging technical and governance issues, knowledge transfer in auditing and the Safe System solutions and the training and accreditation of auditors.
Where there is duplication or discrepancy between Guide to Road Safety Part 6 and Guide to Road Safety Part 6A, Part 6 will take precedence.
The 2019 edition of Guide to Road Safety Part 6 was written by Dr Aut Karndacharuk and Paul Hillier, ARRB. The update project was managed by Joseph Le, NSW Centre for Road Safety and Kenn Beer, Safe System Solutions.
The online version of the Guide is being developed and will be available in March 2019.
Guide link: Guide to Road Safety Part 6: Managing Road Safety Audits
Webinar link: Guide to Road Safety Part 6: Managing Road Safety Audits