Improving Road Safety
in the OIC Member States
49
2. Entry and exit of vehicles and
road users using the network
 Driver licensing and testing
 Vehicle registration and licensing
 Vehicle roadworthiness
 Vehicle and driver and standards
 Traffic offences
 Offence monitoring
 PT vehicle standards
 Commercial vehicles
3. Treatment of crash victims  Emergency response goals and monitoring
 Fleet assessment
 Quality reviews emergency and trauma care
 Protocols and standards
Source: adapted from Bliss and Breen, 2009
4.3.1 Planning, design, operation and use of the road network
The planning, design, operation and use of the road network (including terminal and other
transport facilities) relate to the standards and guidelines that are applied to providing,
maintaining, operating and managing the road network. For road safety it is of paramount
importance that the network is provided with the necessary safety features to ensure the safety
of the users and the safety between users. To facilitate that, the elements of road network design
must comply with safety standards, road users must comply with restrictions set to ensure safe
operation and engineers must ensure that the roads are maintained at a level that these
standards are not compromised.
From a safe systems perspective the following need to be adopted:
 Comprehensive safety standards and rules and performance targets for the planning, design,
operation and use of roads;
 Aligning speed limits with safe systems design principles;
 Ensuring that compliance regimes are in place and that users adhere to the safety rules and
standards; and
 That safety standards and rules take into account the specific needs of high risk road user
groups.
A Safe Systems Approach provides a road environment where roads incorporate concepts such
as Self Explaining Roads (SER (Matena et al., 2008)) and Forgiving Roadsides. In other words,
roads are designed and constructed in such a manner that the risk of crashes is minimized (i.e.
the design of the road will not be directly attributable to a crash) and there where they do occur,
the severity of the crash will be minimized. Roads typically have features such as adequate clear
zones, no roadside hazards; breakaway constructions, safe barriers, no conflicts between
opposing traffic, slow and fast traffic physically separated (in time and/or space), etc.
From an operational perspective, road users are restricted in their use of the network by
prohibitions, speed restrictions and other legal frameworks, e.g. controlling drink driving;