Safe Road

Motor journalists

Toyota Celica

What is a safe road ? What is the standard for a safe road? You are advised to ask the Road Traffic Authority in your country. The next question is how large part of the roads are according to the standards?

Middle road barriers

Sweden is leading in building middle road barriers. This separate the opposite lanes with a solid barrier. In most cases there are two lanes one way and one lane the opposite way. Each some few kilometres the one and two lanes change giving the possibility to pass other cars in both directions. By a rigid separation of the traffic in each direction the risks for meeting accidents are reduced and the number of killed in the traffic on these type of roads is clearly reduced.

In Sweden you find over 3830 km of main roads with middle road barriers. (End of 2007) The plans are to double this length. They estimate that the present middle roads barriers save around 30 lives every year.

Some very few areas in Norway are equipped with middle road barriers. The picture below shows a 1+1 lane with a steel med barrier. Each lane has to be wide enough to allow the access of rescue vehicles.

The new part of E18 in southern Norway opened late 2006 was not equipped with middle road barriers although the knowledge has been available for some time. At the end of 2007 103 km of road has been equipped with middle road barriers. The last years around 10 km has been designed per year.

Signs along the roads

We have a number of signs along the roads, more or less an international standard. Not so in India. They have also taken humor in use to get the drivers awake and driving safe.

Automatic traffic control (ATC)

The number of photo camera boxes along the Norwegian main roads are increased every year. The box is equipped with a speed measuring instrument and a camera. If the car speed is over the set limit at the place of the road, the car is photographed together with the actual speed of the car. The drivers with to high speed are fined after a scale with higher fine the higher the speed is. Over a set of limits the driving license is taken and over an even higher limit the driver is prosecuted.

The last development is the digital cameras which recognises the car from the box further down the road. By that the average speed is calculated.

The main purpose with this system is to reduce the speed on the actual road. The road is therefore marked with signs telling about the system. The ATC is, however, clearly seen and placed stationary at fixed places along the road. The frequent drivers on the same roads will therefore know where the ATC are placed and adjust the speed at these places. If the ATC-boxes had been hided and moved from time to time, the drivers would not know they are. In this case the safe speed would be for a longer part of the road compared to just around the ATC box.

Black box in each car

The alternative to ATC is to install a black box in each car based on GPS. The black box have included a data logger recording the speed and the speed limit on the actual road. This black box may be controlled by the police on regular basis and after an accident.

The Skarnsund bridge in Nord-Trøndelag, Norway

Traffic light in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Over the normal traffic lights, a timer shows the number of seconds the shown light will remain. The same system is in use in Bangkok in Thailand. This is a good help to have a safe crossing.

Example of an unsafe roundabout.

"Roundabout" south of Grua in Lunner, Norway. This design is far from optimal in getting the speed down for all vehicles approaching the roundabout.

Have a look on the way the Danish design their roundabouts. This reference is written in Denish with some good pictures. Have a look on the pictures, and you get part of the story with lights on outer and inner wall. Look here:

http://www.vejdirektoratet.dk/dokument.asp?page=document&objno=80515

Is this the "roundabout" shown over designed to allow the Audi a fast drive straight through as shown on the full page advertisement below?

Audi promotes unsafe driving in this advertisement.

To Top of Page

In 2006 the number of fines based on this system in Norway was over 150,000 and the total amount as fines was close to NOK 400 million (90 million USD). Around 100,000 in addition were measured to have access speed but the quality of the picture was not good enough to identify the driver.

In Denmark the use of pictures from the photo boxes may be extended to fine drivers using a handheld mobile telephone or not using the safety belt. If the picture is clearly showing these law breaks, a fine may be the result in addition to the fine for driving too fast. (JydskeVestkysten, DK)

Inside the photo box a camera is placed in most cases, not always. The box may be dummy with no instrumentation. That saves investments and the drivers do not know which are active and which are dummy.

Right turn on red light

In some countries, as most states in USA, the drivers are allowed to turn right on red light if no car is in conflict of this turn. In Norway this right turn on red is not allowed. Dagens Næringsliv had in April 2007 an article about an US distribution company which had introduced the rule to use right turns as often as possible. They managed to plan the distribution trip in a way that the right turns were in 90 % of the cases. By doing this, they saved both time and petrol. Why do we not have this rule to allow right turn on red in Norway?

Intelligent roads

A research project IRIS (Slippery Road Information System) use the information already on board most cars in their ABS- and EPS-systems. With this data the friction factor for the road can be calculated. The data from a number of cars can be transferred in real time to a road control station. Here the adjustable speed signs may be adjusted or the road maintenance activity initiated. (VTI aktuelt, 1/2007)

From Hommelvik. The centre has a speed limit of 30 km/hour. Here the pedestrians may cross the street. No barriers are arranged between the pavements and the streets. Outside the centre the speed limit is 50 km/hour with no middle road barrier and with a separate lane for cyclists and pedestrians. This lane is protected by a double steel barrier.

From Hommelvik: A roundabout and a pedestrian crossing in the centre. The pedestrian crossing is lifted over the street level to force the vehicles to reduce the speed. The roundabout is probably too open to force the vehicles to really reduce the speed.

We have a lot of mountains and hard rock in Norway. Two hundred years ago we did believe that the "Troll" were living inside the mountains. Our author Henrik Ibsen wrote about this in "Peer Gynt". Peer did even visit the "Trolls".

To-day we do have a lot of "Troll" doors along our roads as shown below. The hard rock is exposed just beside the road.

From time to time some car drivers try to visit the Trolls. So far, the doors to them have been closed: This one below, did not succeed.

To protect the vehicles, the sides of the roads are some places protected as shown below. This is a part of the strategy to reduce the damage if a mistake is done, and an accident occurs.

Another device for the protection of drivers are the end design of the side rails as shown at the top of this page. Here the first 5-6 meters are perforated to reduce the force given to a car hitting the end. This end is even on the left side of the road, in the case a vehicle ends up on the wrong side of the road.

Steel barrier in Hakadal along the main road to Hadeland.

A vehicle has tried to penetrate the steel barrier without leaving the road (May 2008). This has to be repaired. The vertical rods here are made of plastic tubes, solid enough to manage this treatment. The old wood rods, would have broken in this case.

On late September 2008 the steel barrier was repaired and in good shape for a next hit.