Final Publishable Report
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Final Publishable Report CONTRACT N° : GRD2/2001/50088/RISER/S07.15369 PROJECT N° : GRD2/2001/50088 ACRONYM : RISER TITLE : Roadside Infrastructure for Safer European Roads PROJECT CO-ORDINATOR: Chalmers University of Technology PARTNERS : Chalmers University of Technology (Chalmers) SE Vehicle Safety Research Centre (VSRC) UK Centre d’Études du Techniques de l’Équipement (CETE) FR European Union Road Federation (ERF) BE Fundación para la Investigación y Desarrollo en Transporte y Energía (CIDAUT) ES Technical University of Graz (TUG) AT Hierros y Aplananciones S.A (HIASA) ES Helsinki University of Technology (HUT) FI The Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) NL Volkmann & Rossbach GMBH & CO.KG (V&R) DE PROJECT START DATE : 2003-01-01 DURATION : 36 Months Date of issue of this report : 2006-07-14 Project funded by the European Community under the ‘Competitive and Sustainable Growth’ Programme (1998-2002) Executive Summary The Roadside Infrastructure for Safer European Roads (RISER) was a 5th Framework "Growth" project co-sponsored by the European Commission Directorate General for Transportation and Energy (DG-TREN). The project started 1 January 2003 and had a duration of 36 months. Ten contractors participated in the project, representing nine European countries. The project had three specific objectives that addressed the issue of roadside safety, that is to say, the risks and consequences of vehicles leaving their travel lane and experiencing a violent event in the areas bordering the roadway. Often referred to as single vehicle accidents (SVA) or run-off-road crashes (ROR), these events represent about a third of road fatalities in the European Union member states. The main objectives of RISER were to: 1. develop a database(s) with information describing run-off-road crashes. 2. analyse the collected data to provide engineering and human factors links between the roadside infrastructure and safety and operational issues. 3. develop a set of best practice guidelines that will improve the state of roadside safety in Europe. The RISER project has produced two separate accident databases that address the frequency and general circumstances of ROR crashes (approximately 265,000 cases) and specific driver, vehicle, and road infrastructure information (211 cases). These two databases are significant contributions to roadside safety that have not been previously collected under the framework of one project. From these databases, technical information was produced to indicate the risk of accidents with different types of roadside infrastructure, important information defining the configurations of ROR crashes, the response of drivers to roadside objects, and the response of infrastructure to different crash configurations in the real world or laboratory experiments. A number of technical reports were generated by the RISER project to describe the different aspects of the project. The most important reports were deliverables D06: European Best Practice for Roadside Design: Guidelines for Roadside Infrastructure on New and Existing Roads and D08: European Best Practice for Roadside Design: Guidelines for Maintenance and Operations of Roadside Infrastructure. These two documents summarize the findings into documents that are suitable for road administrations, road safety researchers, road operators, and manufacturers of road equipment. ii Table of Contents EXECUTIVE SUMMARY................................................................................................................. II OBJECTIVES OF THE PROJECT.................................................................................................. 4 IDENTIFICATION AND COLLECTION OF DATA FOR THE RISER PROJECT .......................... 6 DEVELOPMENT OF STATISTICAL DATABASE..................................................................................... 6 DEVELOPMENT OF DETAILED DATABASE........................................................................................... 7 COLLECTION OF ROAD OPERATOR DATA ...................................................................................... 10 COLLECTION OF TEST DATA .......................................................................................................... 11 ROADSIDE INFRASTRUCTURE INFLUENCE ON DRIVER BEHAVIOUR .................................................. 13 Literature Review .................................................................................................................. 13 COLLECTION OF CURRENT DESIGN GUIDELINES............................................................................ 14 COLLECTION OF CURRENT MAINTENANCE GUIDELINES .................................................................. 17 ANALYSIS OF ACCIDENT DATA/STUDY OF HUMAN PERFORMANCE................................. 19 SUMMARY ................................................................................................................................... 19 ANALYSIS OF STATISTICAL DATA ................................................................................................... 19 ANALYSIS OF DETAILED DATA........................................................................................................ 21 Struck Infrastructure.............................................................................................................. 22 SIMULATION STUDY...................................................................................................................... 25 Accident reconstruction: PC-Crash....................................................................................... 25 Accident reconstruction: Finite Elements.............................................................................. 27 Accident reconstruction: MADYMO ...................................................................................... 27 Modelling of vehicle infrastructure collisions:........................................................................ 29 Simulation matrix .................................................................................................................. 30 Driver Simulator Study .......................................................................................................... 30 SIMULATOR STUDY RESULTS ....................................................................................................... 34 DEVELOPMENT OF BEST PRACTICE GUIDELINES FOR ROADSIDE INFRASTRUCTURE. 36 DESIGN GUIDELINES .................................................................................................................... 36 Obstacle Identification........................................................................................................... 37 Safety Zone Criteria .............................................................................................................. 39 Recovery Zone Criteria ......................................................................................................... 40 Hazard Evaluation, Removal and Modification..................................................................... 42 Hazard Protection ................................................................................................................. 44 Monitoring ............................................................................................................................. 45 MAINTENANCE AND OPERATIONS GUIDELINES............................................................................... 49 Routine Inspections .............................................................................................................. 49 Data Collection and Analysis ................................................................................................ 50 Repair Plan ........................................................................................................................... 50 Training ................................................................................................................................. 52 LIST OF PROJECT DELIVERABLES.......................................................................................... 53 COMPARISON OF INITIALLY PLANNED ACTIVITIES AND WORK ACTUALLY ACCOMPLISHED.......................................................................................................................... 54 MANAGEMENT AND CO-ORDINATION ASPECTS................................................................... 56 RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS ................................................................................................. 57 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................................. 58 REFERENCES .............................................................................................................................. 60 iii Objectives of the project The number of fatal and serious injuries related to the occurrence of a single vehicle leaving the road is a significant portion of European road casualties. The range of casualty statistics varies from country to country, but the European average of single vehicle collision fatalities is one third of annual road fatalities[1]. The outcome of these accidents was highly dependent on the interactions between the vehicle and the roadside environment. The vision of the RISER project was to develop a knowledge base that can provide better roadside design tools and strategies as available resources were conspicuously incomplete. The objectives of