Highway Design and Traffic Safety Engineering [Hardcover]

The author, Ruediger Lamm, March 30, 1999.

The tragic consequence of traffic accidents puts unsafe traffic operations on a par with war and drug use. For example, more than 500.000 people are killed - or about one life every minute - and over 15 million suffer injuries as a result of road accidents every year worldwide. An estimate of a famous Prognosis Institute indicates that 50 million people will die and 1.1 billion will be injured from road accidents worldwide between 1995 and the year 2030. Put in the context of the 1995 population of nations, this represents the death of about 90 percent of the population of France and injury to every man, woman and child in China.

Of course, one could give the blame for those numbers to the irresponsible social behavior of drivers, but such a classification would be too easy and unfair.

Since decades it is believed that the existing highway geometric design guidelines in many countries should first of all guarantee a safe ride. Thus, if the guidelines guarantee the safety of a road, then "no" or "only a few" accidents should occur on that road. Therefore, it is often said, when a driver fails, it was his way of driving which caused the accident. However, when drivers fail a number of times at certain locations, then it becomes obvious that the problem lies, not with the drivers, but mainly with the geometry of the road itself.

In this connection, I want to cite a comment of my

"Having spent a lot of my career as a practising designer, I think I must have designed and built every mistake possible plus a few that nobody has thought of yet!" Exactly this was my feeling, when I decided many years ago, to write a book focusing on highway geometric design with special emphasis on traffic safety. The main intention was to also pro-vide for highway engineering quantitative safety criteria, comparable to those, which existed in other engineering fields, such as structural, since a long time.

After 10 years of rigorous research and evaluation of practical experience, my colleagues and I could clarify fundamental relationships and interrelationships between highway design, driving behavior, driving dynamics and accident characteristics. Based on this knowledge sound design rules in agreement with quantitative safety evaluation processes could be developed, in order to achieve good, and to detect fair (tolerable), and poor design practices. In this way the designer has a tool for decision-making in his hands, whether or not a planned or existing roadway section is acceptable from a safety point of view.

All relevant aspects presented and discussed in the various chapters always fall within the context of safety, in order to substantially comply with the worldwide effort of reducing the number and severity of road accidents.

I am confident that this book will definitely help to build or rebuild safer roads. If it helps to save only "one life", then our work was successful.

I hope you enjoy the book and feel free to write to me about your opinion.

Regards

Ruediger Lamm