Safety project will have motorists seeing stars

11 January 2007
 
A star-rating system is to be introduced on Britain’s inter-urban roads, in order to alert drivers to the potential dangers of unfamiliar roads.
The Road Protection Score scheme, devised by the European Road Assessment Programme (EuroRAP), will give main roads a score from zero to four stars, with the lowest scores indicating the most dangerous roads.
Assessment of 7,000km of UK roads is currently being carried out by the German motoring organisation ADAC, co-founded by the AA Motoring Trust and the Highways Agency.
In deciding a road’s star rating, the road surveyors are considering three main types of accident:
Head-on crashes: How well is traffic separated, and what disincentives to over-taking along dangerous stretches of road are there?
Run-off crashes: How well are drivers protected against hitting rigid poles, signs, lampposts and trees, or going down embankments if they leave the road?
Junction crashes: To what extent could a junction layout or the frequency of turnings contribute towards accidents?
A spokesman for the AA Motoring Trust said more emphasis was put on the physical layout of the roads than individual accident data. The organisation hopes local authorities will pick up on the results when they are released in the next few months.
The RPS scheme mirrors the system used by the Euro New Car Assessment Programme to transform safety protection in cars over the past 10 years.
Bert Morris, director of the AA Motoring Trust, said: ‘Just as the star-rating system for car-crash protection has inspired manufacturers to transform the safety features of cars in the UK, so EuroRAP RPS will encourage road authorities to innovate and upgrade safety features on lethal roads.’
The AA Motoring Trust said the RPS scheme aimed to encourage the development of innovative engineering for ‘forgiving roads’.

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