Road Safety

Cover of Road Safety Engineering Risk Assessment Part 7: Crash Rates Database
Road Safety Engineering Risk Assessment Part 7: Crash Rates Database
  • Publication no: AP-T152-10
  • ISBN: 978-1-921709-02-9
  • Published: 22 January 2010

This project forms part of a major Austroads strategic research program to improve the understanding of the relationships between crash risk, road infrastructure and traffic operations. A crash rates database was created for all Australian jurisdictions combining crash information with road feature and traffic flow data, and thus providing a platform for detailed analysis of crash risks.

The objectives of the project were to develop road section and intersection crash rate databases for Australian states and territories, derive crash cost rates for various road and intersection stereotypes, report the relative ratios of casualty crash rates and crash cost rates between the various, road and intersection stereotypes (relative risks), carry out additional analysis to provide useable crash rate and crash cost information to road authorities, for use in the Road Safety Risk Manager (RSRM) software and other Road Engineering Risk Assessment (RSERA) projects and disseminate the information, explore local road crash rates and demonstrate the practical applications of the database.

  • 1. INTRODUCTION
  • 2. METHOD
    • 2.1. Stakeholder Input
    • 2.2. Data Acquisition and Management
    • 2.3. Database Design
    • 2.4. Detailed Analysis
  • Exposure: vehicle-kilometres travelled, entering vehicles
  • Crash rates
  • Crash cost rates
  • National overview
  • Local government area crash rates
  • Practical applications
  • 3. FINDINGS
    • 3.1. National Overview
    • 3.2. State and Territory Overview
      • 3.2.1. New South Wales
      • 3.2.2. Victoria
      • 3.2.3. Queensland
      • 3.2.4. South Australia
      • 3.2.5. Western Australia
      • 3.2.6. Tasmania
      • 3.2.7. Australian Capital Territory (ACT)
    • 3.3. Example Local Road Crash Rates
    • 3.4. Demonstration of Practical Applications
      • 3.4.1. Crash Rate Functions
      • 3.4.2. Safety Performance Functions
      • 3.4.3. Analysis of Intersection Traffic Exposure Methods
      • 3.4.4. Example of Multiple Variable Analysis
      • 3.4.5. Influence of the Road Hierarchy
      • 3.4.6. Road Type and Speed Limit
      • 3.4.7. Analysis by Terrain
      • 3.4.8. Lane and Shoulder Width
      • 3.4.9. Horizontal Alignment
      • 3.4.10. Analysis by Time of Day
      • 3.4.11. Analysis of Specific Crash Types
      • 3.4.12. Relative Risk Functions
      • 3.4.13. Influence of State-Local Intersection Crashes on Road Section Crash Rates
      • 3.4.14. Accuracy of Results
  • 4. DISCUSSION
  • 5. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
  • REFERENCES
  • APPENDIX A AUSTROADS ROAD SAFETY ENGINEERING RISK ASSESSMENT PROJECT