Applying Safety Countermeasures Incrementally to Existing Roads

It is recognised that the safety performance of existing roads can be improved without having to implement the standards used to design new roads. This paper explores the wide range of incremental options available to practitioners to apply incrementally to improve safety on existing roads. Incremental Safety is the application of non-greenfield design standards to sections of existing road where the road is exhibiting poor safety performance. Incremental Safety standards may be applied where the “do nothing” option is not ethically appropriate and the application of “greenfield” design standards is financially, physically or environmentally unachievable. Incremental Safety Principles are proposed as a pragmatic and cost efficient means of improving the safety performance of the existing NSW road network. It is based on the premise that retro-fitting cost effective and appropriate safety improvements can generate good safety benefits when applied selectively to existing roads. Many existing rural and rural/urban state and local roads are still exhibiting high rates of fatalities and serious injuries and these roads provide the opportunity for significant reductions in the NSW road toll. The application of Incremental Safety Principles will help practitioners to make the existing road network safer by providing them with safe but less costly remedial options.