Accidents and casualties on our
roads can be reduced through
education, training,
publicity, enforcement and engineering (safety engineering).
Safety engineering involves physically changing the road
or certain aspects or part of the road in order to bring about a
reduction in the level of casualties.
This work is targeted at:
- Accident clusters that occur at places such as
junctions or bends. In Suffolk such sites are currently defined as
locations where four or more injury accidents have
occurred within an 80 metre radius in the last three
years. There are currently over 200 such locations in
Suffolk.
- Routes where there are a number of
accidents and casualties that are giving rise for concern.
Interventions of this type are identified by the number of people
killed or seriously injured in a three year period per 100
million vehicle kilometres (that is a measure of risk related to
the length of the route and volume of traffic as well as the number
of accidents and casualties).
- Areas where the concentration of
accidents and casualties is such that engineering intervention
is warranted. Such sites could typically include housing and
shopping areas and the type of casualty would tend to be vulnerable
road users such as pedestrians and cyclists.
- Anxiety Relief Schemes which are sites where
there is a perceived level of risk of accidents but the actual
level of occurrence is low. A small budget is aimed at such works,
which tend to include installation of new traffic signs and white
lining.