Ideally, there would be a perfect balance between the two, but quite often it is not possible, so a compromise must be made.

So, therefore what is more important, mobility or safety?

Safety should be the top priority of public agencies, even if LOS decreases and travelers are forced to spend a few extra minutes in traffic. Public agencies respond to public demands, and the vast majority of complaints are about congestion and not safety. Motorists see and experience congestion on almost a daily basis. But they don’t see safety. If we were to de-emphasize mobility we could in fact help save more lives. And public road agencies should be more concerned that we get to work safely and return home to our husbands, wives and children safely. Seeing my children again is more important than an extra 10 minutes in traffic.

Two prominent articles, one in the New York Times and the other on Yahoo! News call attention to the very real epidemic of death and carnage on the road.

For example, the Yahoo! News story headline reads, Highway crashes kill more than 41,000 in 2007. This is significant because, even though this is a decrease, it is still a ridiculously high number.

The New York Times provided an interesting graph showing the current trends in road related fatalities. (click on the image below to view larger size)

One reason some give for the increase in motorcycle deaths is the increase in motorcycle riders. According to the New York Times article:

Experts say the trend is most likely to continue, as high gasoline prices will encourage some travelers to use their bikes more often, getting 50 miles for the $4 gallon of gasoline instead of 20 in their cars.

“We have seen the total motorcycle participation in vehicle miles traveled go up,” said Mary E. Peters, the secretary of transportation and a longtime Harley-Davidson rider.

“We might see more people moving to that mode of transportation,” Ms. Peters said. “We might see that data skew.”

Surveys conducted along some of East Africa's major transport corridors have found that truckers often make up the minority of clients at highway stops.

Alan Ferguson, a researcher with the US-based non-governmental research organization, Constella Futures, was part of a team that looked at HIV vulnerability along the transport corridor linking Kenya's port city of Mombasa with the Ugandan capital, Kampala. Their research revealed that along this route, only 30 percent of female sex worker clients were truckers.

A similar study conducted along the highway from Kampala to Juba in Southern Sudan, found that 28 percent of sex worker clients were truckers. The rest of the clients came from a wide range of occupations including local businessmen, teachers and health care workers.

Ferguson said it was time for awareness programmes to "go beyond" truckers and involve the communities surrounding highway stops.

In West Africa, communities surrounding border posts were just as vulnerable to HIV as truckers and female sex workers, noted Dr Justin Koffi, executive director of the HIV/AIDS Corridor Project, a regional initiative supported by UNAIDS, the World Bank and USAID that is targeting people using the highway between Cote D'Ivoire's economic capital, Abidjan and Lagos, Nigeria.

According to Koffi, studies have found that HIV prevalence rates in border communities are twice as high as national averages, but that awareness programmes remain weak in these areas.

The families of truck drivers were also neglected by existing prevention programs, according to Dr Asif Altaf of the International Transport Workers Federation. "What about the families? The wife back home? These programs need to address the family factor otherwise the cycle will continue," he warned.

The life of a trucker

But truckers are still vulnerable. The Constella Futures study found that along the route between Mombasa and the Uganda border, an average of 2,400 trucks park overnight at 39 "hot spots", which attract an estimated 5,600 sex workers.

Ferguson noted that as drivers become aware of the risk of engaging in unprotected casual sex, some have opted to maintain semi-regular sexual partners along the transport route. Since this involved some level of trust and intimacy, condom use was less likely.

Studies have found that a significant number of workers in the road transport sector have continued to engage in unprotected casual sex, despite being aware of its dangers. Possible explanations for this behavior include high levels of fatalism resulting from the dangerous nature of their jobs, widespread alcohol and substance abuse, and stigmatisation of this group.

UN Special Envoy for Africa, Elizabeth Mataka warned against labelling truck drivers responsible for spreading HIV. She noted that it was poor working conditions that made truckers vulnerable.

Altaf of the International Transport Workers Federation confirmed that truck drivers had no proper working conditions, received low wages, and worked alone and away from home for long periods of time.

Another contributing factor was the long delays drivers experienced at borders while waiting for customs to clear goods. In the West Africa corridor for example, the delays at border posts ranged from days to months.

In such instances, Altaf pointed out, sex – a "normal physiological phenomenon" – was a means of coping.

"I'm from Bangladesh and people there say truckers are bad people because they are always having alcohol...but what else do you have?" he asked. "When you're on the road, it's sex by the side of the road and bars by the side of the road."

This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations

The future of stop signs may be a lot brighter, and flashier.

At the intersection of Altamesa Boulevard and Trail Lake Drive in southwest Fort Worth, two stop signs with blinking red LED lights have been installed to improve visibility for motorists. The lights, which blink about every second, line the perimeter of the octagon-shaped signs. They were installed April 24. Fort Worth officials say they will test their effectiveness for several months.

Background

The Altamesa-Trail Lake intersection is six lanes wide and known for poor visibility. The city was considering putting in large red beacons to draw attention to the stop signs. A representative of Tapco, a company that makes signs, asked Fort Worth officials to try the blinking signs.

"We had tried a similar product from Tapco with a plastic ring of blinking lights that was attached to a stop sign eight years ago, and were not impressed with the product durability," said Mark Mathis, city traffic services manager. "But they showed me this new solar-powered unit that is built within the stop sign itself and made out of aluminum rather than plastic. We agreed that Altamesa and Trail Lake would be opportunity to take a serious look at the product."

Features

The lights are focused with a plastic lens to broadcast light only 10 degrees either side of center, so nearby homes aren't hit with glare.

• A dimming feature reduces the light intensity at night.
• Batteries won't need to be replaced for three years, Tapco officials say.
• Solar panels can hold a charge up to seven days without direct sunlight.

At what cost?

They're expensive — $1,400 each — compared with about $50 for a standard 36-inch stop sign.

What's next

Fort Worth officials also plan to install a blinking school zone sign soon at an undetermined location. City officials will monitor the effectiveness of the blinking signs for a few months and decide whether to recommend wider use.

Are they safe?

The number of vehicles not fully stopping at a stop sign was reduced by 29 percent, and the number of stop-sign runners who "blew through" the intersection was reduced by 53 percent, according to a 2003 study of LED flashing stop signs conducted by the Texas Transportation Institute in College Station.

Are they legal?

Federal traffic device guidelines allow cities and states to use illuminated signs, as long as the lights meet color standards and flash 50-60 times per minute.

Learn more about Tapco

According to NHTSA, American students are nearly eight times safer riding in a school bus than with their own parents and guardians in cars. The fatality rate for school buses is only 0.2 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled (VMT) compared to 1.5 fatalities per 100 million VMT for cars. This impressive safety record is a result of the Department of Transportation's requirements for compartmentalization on large school buses, and lap belts plus compartmentalization on small school buses.

The NHTSA report concluded that requiring lap belts on large, new school buses would appear to have little, if any, benefit in reducing serious-to-fatal injuries in severe frontal crashes. In rare circumstances, tests indicate that in some severe frontal crashes there may be increased risk of serious neck injuries and possibly abdominal injury among young passengers wearing lap belts. read the full report

However, in September of 1999 the NTSB issued a report on school bus crash-worthiness. The study found “compartmentalization” was ineffective during six typical school bus accidents. In every example the 222 seat failed to contain the passengers. Children were injured and killed as a result of both ejection and being tossed violently within the bus itself.

The Board concluded that:

Current compartmentalization is incomplete in that it does not protect school bus passengers during lateral impacts with vehicles of large mass and in rollovers, because in such accidents, passengers do not always remain completely within the seating compartment.

The Board went on to point out that passengers who were propelled from the “compartment” were the ones more likely to be injured during side impact and rollover collisions.

"Over 200,000 children have been injured since the inception of compartmentalization because of the failure of the compartment protect children in school bus accidents" said Dr. Arthur Yeager, co-founder of The Safety Lobby.

And yet, according to NEA (http://www.nea.org/esphome/issues/seatbelt.html) bus driver concerns fall on the side of no seat belts.

Bus Driver concerns:

• Students can and do use the heavy belt buckles as weapons, injuring other riders.
• It is next to impossible to make sure that all students keep their belts properly fastened, so that they are not injured by the belts in an accident.
• If a bus has to be evacuated in an emergency, such as a fire, panicked or disoriented students might be trapped by their belts.

What is the solution? How can the road safety industry keep children safe while riding the bus to and from school?

Most slip base posts seem to be derived from the AASHTO Roadside Design Guide criteria. The Austroads report AP-R200 "Frangible Sign Supports Part 2: State of the Art Review" Section 3: International Practice and Literature Review 3.1.1 AASHTO Roadside Design Guide states "The guide discusses location of signs to minimise the risk of the support being struck. The mechanism of failure is dependent to some extent on what height the vehicle strikes the support. For this reason the likely impact position may be affected when locating supports on slopes. Where possible the supports should be located on level terrain."

AP-R200 section 2.9 also reported discussions with representatives from each state. Responses included "Concern that if a sign is not struck at the normal height (eg flat approach) that the sign will not fail properly. This may be as a result of a vehicle striking a kerb, or travelling out of control down an embankment". There are two problems here. One is that hitting the sign high means uncertainty whether the slip base will function. The other problem is if the slip base does function and if the hinge point functions there is still a heavy steel post behind the sign. There is a chance of the steel post penetrating the windscreen and entering the cabin of the vehicle. This would apply particularly for high vehicles like trucks. Anywhere that a car is likely to become airborne is a location that slip base posts should not be used.

AP-R200 section 2.9 reported another concern; "Frangible signs at intersections are difficult to cater for, with the possibility of the sign being struck from almost any direction". This is a problem with slip base posts. They have been designed to be hit from the front or back, but not from the side. Truly frangible supports will absorb the energy of the impact no matter where they are hit.

Austroads publication AP-T47 06 Revision of Guide to Engineering Practice - Part 8 - Traffic Control Devices 5.2.3 Large Supports when describing slip base posts warns "However they are designed for impact up to a limited angle and may not perform as intended if struck from the side."

AP-T47 06 5.5 Installation and maintenance issues for frangible supports states, "The following aspects are critical to the successful behaviour of a frangible sign support:

• Base bolts must be installed and maintained at the tension specified on drawings or in specifications
• The frangible mechanism must be installed at the correct height above the ground surface. If it is too low the surrounding surface may impede the correct operation of the slip base, and if it is too high an impacting vehicle will snag on that part of the base that remains in place
• The ground level around the base plate must be compacted and finished so that it remains at the correct level relative to the slip base, debris will not build up around the base, and the soil will not erode from around the base
• Hinges should be installed strictly in accordance with drawings and should not be modified (e.g. by welding) for any purpose as part of maintenance operations.

AP-T47 06 5.2.2 Small Supports states, "... it is important that the spacing between posts is such that an errant vehicle is likely to only collide with one of the posts. Opinion varies on the spacing, a value in the range 1.5m to 2.4m being adopted."

AP-T47 06 5.6 Frangible post selection guidelines states, "In selecting post numbers and sizes the:

• Smallest possible number of posts should be used
• Distance between posts should not be less than 1.6 metres to avoid the risk of an errant car simultaneously striking more than one post

I submit to you that although steel slip base posts are infinitely safer than rigid posts, they do have limitations in their applications. I believe the following limitations should be applied to the use of slip base posts immediately.

1. Slip base posts be banned from filled batters of 1:3 or greater or where the base plate will be more than 400mm below the road level. This is a Danish regulation, Norwegian Road Authority specifies batters steeper than 1:4. The Norwegian specification should be adopted by January 1, 2012

2. Slip base posts be banned from gore areas as the GE2-3 exit signs are (a) likely to be hit, (b) likely to be hit at an angle greater than the design parameter of the slip base post, (c) the post is likely to finish up on a roadway, and (d) a vehicle is likely to hit more than one post simultaneously as the signs are 1.8m wide giving a standard post spacing of 1.08m (1.8 x 0.6).

3. Height of stubs above ground of existing installations should be checked and any rectification works to be completed within 12 months.

4. Torque settings of bolts on existing installations should be checked every 3 months for at least one year, until it is evident that the torque is not changing.

5. Installers are to be liable for checking and maintaining torque settings for 5 years from installation. This is to be introduced after an Approved Sign Installer program is initiated. The price of this checking is to be included in the initial installation price. Records of torque settings to be presented to the Approved Installer Program administrator.

6. Slip base posts to be banned where it is likely that a vehicle will hit the sign from an angle other than the design angle. This includes within 60m of an intersection.

7. Slip base posts to be banned where the is kerbing.

Points 1 to 6 can be avoided by using an approved energy absorbent post. A post may be considered energy absorbent if it meets the requirements of NCHRP 350 or EN 12767 and has a failure mechanism which does not rely on a slip base. It must function when struck from any direction. Full crash test reports to either standard must be supplied to Queensland Main Roads. The full scale crash test must use a vehicle as specified in the standard. Computer simulations will not be accepted unless the largest and smallest posts in a "family" of posts have been successfully full scale crash tested. The structural requirements must be satisfied by showing compliance with AS1170.2 2002 - Structural Design Actions - Wind Actions and a relevant Australian Standard. This compliance must be from an independent Australian certified Structural Engineer. Foundation sizes are the responsibility of the manufacturer / supplier. It is suggested that these are designed an independent Australian certified Structural Engineer.

Also the following restriction should be placed on all posts.

Unless protected by a barrier which is there for another purpose, no posts may be installed with less than 1.5m between the posts. Note: Minimum centre to centre of posts is 1.5m plus one post diameter. Hitting 2 x 50NB posts is the same as hitting 1 x 100NB post.

It was approved at the UN General Assembly that a road safety conference will be held in 2009 in Russia. The goal of the meeting is purportedly to gather together high-ranking ministers of transport and health from most of the U.N.'s member states who will discuss road safety issues and should hopefully spur real change.

The IRF applauds and fully supports the UN resolution and the upcoming conference. It is much needed and long over due. As government officials and policy makers come together to combat this epidemic, IRF encourages all to remember that road safety isn't just about driver bahvior - wearing seat belts, driving slower, not driving intoxicated.

Road safety needs a three-pronged approach - the driver, the vechicle and the road.

Although a sweeping change in driver behavior would do much to curb the current carnage on the road, it is not an all inclusive solution. Vehicles need to be safer and the roads certainly should plan for accidents. For no matter how safe a driver or secure the vehicle, humans will always make mistakes and vehicles can malfunction. And the road should be designed, built, and equipped in order to forgive that mistake, and mediate vehicle failure.

An all-inclusive approach to road safety should include the transfer of technology and the proper training to implement such technologies, including such topics as, but not limited to:

• Roadside Safety & Median Application
• Proper Vertical & Horizontal Signage – Delineation and Illumination* Work Zone Safety
• Intersection and Roundabout Safety
• Low Cost Safety Improvements
• Pedestrian Safety
• Safety Technology Concepts
• Traffic Calming
• Enforcement
• Safety Audits
• Collection and Use of Statistics

What other problem areas can we improve in order to build better, safer roads?

The Road Safety Working Group is open to all IRF members who have an interest in road safety. The Road Safety Working Group meets once a year and holds two or three conference calls during any twelve month period. During these meetings and conference calls, ideas, opinions, and information are exchanged in order to capture all views of any given topic. This all-inclusive approach ensures that IRF-Washington policy statements on road safety will be a sound, diverse representation of the worldwide road building community.

Once the IRF-Washington Road Safety Working Group finalizes a policy statement, the proposed policy statements are presented to the IRF Council on Road Safety (the consortium of Road Safety Working Groups from Brussels, Geneva and Washington) for their endorsement and support. During the meeting of the IRF Council on Road Safety, all working group members have the opportunity to speak on behalf of the proposed policy statement. Once the statement (or white paper) is approved by the Council, IRF presents the approved policy during a ministerial meeting to key government decision makers from around the world. Currently, IRF has more than 70 ministries and road directorate members. Road Safety Working Group members may be invited to meet with the ministers to discuss the policy statement.

If the IRF Council on Road Safety does not endorse a position statement from one of the Road Safety Working Groups, the Road Safety Working Group is allowed to publicize the position statement with the clear designation that the position statement is only supported by the single Program Center and not by the IRF as a whole.

Upcoming position statements include, but are not limited to:

• The need for on-going road safety training as it relates to roadside safety, intersection/roundabout safety, vulnerable user safety, work zone safety, driver education, enforcement techniques and road safety audit
• Motorcycle use continues to grow around the world and motorcycle accidents and fatalities continue to rise at an alarming number. How can road authorities modify their road design, education and enforcement procedures to reduce these fatalities?
• Congestion in municipal areas is worse than ever causing safety, productivity, and environmental concerns. What innovative concepts should be considered to alleviate congestion in municipalities?
• Poles located close to the road can be extremely dangerous. The use of breakaway devices and other technologies to make these rigid roadside hazards less dangerous by allowing the vehicles to pass through should be endorsed and encouraged. What can be done to promote the expanded use of these safety features?

Members of the IRF-Washington Road Safety Working Group will be able to effect real change in the world. This is a great opportunity to have an attentive audience of key governmental decision makers around the world who will hear the voice of the industry and listen to your counsel.

Join the IRF-Washington Road Safety Working Group

Road authorities in countries that do not have updated or adequate roadside safety feature specifications should use either the European EN 1317 or the American NCHRP 350 criteria or both of them when developing roadside safety hardware performance specifications. The development of specifications outside NCHRP 350 and EN1317 would be both time consuming and expensive and would not produce better safety hardware at a cheaper price. The EN1317 and the NCHRP 350 criteria have proved to be very effective. Allowing products that meet either criterion will give the local road authorities more product options thereby reducing project costs.

During their meeting on January 14, 2008, the following proposal was approved unanimously by the AFB 20(2) Roadside Safety Design Subcommittee on International Research Activities for those countries currently not required to use NCHRP 350 or EN 1317 criteria to create performance specifications for their roadside safety features.

"The AFB20(2) Roadside Safety Design Subcommittee on International Research Activities recommends that road authorities in all countries should only specify roadside safety hardware, (i.e. longitudinal safety barriers, crash cushions, terminals and transitions) that has met either NCHRP 350 or EN 1317 criteria (or their updates.)"

The IRF (Washington and Brussels) support and endorse this statement and encourage every road authority around the world to implement this policy. Spending money wisely to use current, proven state of the art technology, products and concepts will help to make the roads safer and better.

Full scale crash testing, required by the new proposed NCHRP 350 update in the United States, has shown that some multiple post sign panel designs currently in use are not capable of resisting the forces exerted when one of the support posts is impacted. The result is the inability of the impacted post fuse/hinge plates to activate, which could cause the failure of all of the remaining frangible bases. It is critical for safety that a multiple post sign should remain standing and be supported by the posts not impacted. The post fuse/hinge plates are critical components in the resultant change in velocity of the vehicle and passengers.

Research is needed to study the structural characteristics of ground mounted sign panels that are currently installed on multiple posts, This research should include a survey of sign panel designs currently in use and subsequent modeling of each design. Simulation crash testing should be performed with both the small car and pickup truck. Simulation should be verified by full scale crash testing. The final report would result in minimum sign panel design criterion for use on multiple post ground mounted signs with either breakaway posts or base assemblies with fuse/hinge plates.

How do we get this research funded and started?

Mike Stenko has over 25 years in the industry and has been with Transpo for over 16 years. He is a member of TRB, ACI, ASCE, Chairman of ACI Comm. on Polymers Concrete. Sub-Comm. Chair of AASHTO/AGC/ARTBA Taskforce 13 Subcommittee on highway signs and luminaries.