Area of Opportunity 7: Road Safety delivery by States and Municipalities

5.7Area of Opportunity 7: Road Safety delivery by States and Municipalities

Recommendation 7: Galvanize municipalities to effective action and realign the capacity of municipalities for Road Safety delivery with the assigned accountability and responsibility.

Recommendation 7.1: Increase Municipal accountability and capacity. Capacity can be increased through four possible mechanisms (which are not mutually exclusive):

Legislated amalgamations to reduce the number of small municipalities, and preventing the creation of more municipalities;

Encouraging and facilitating collaborations across multiple municipalities to allow them economies of scale and the potential to create processes and capabilities for Road Safety management, including municipalizing traffic as a consortium of municipalities rather than separately;

Allowing the operation of speed cameras primarily for Road Safety via better management of speeding but also to provide a revenue stream for other Road Safety activities, without requiring full municipalization of traffic. This could be regulated by requiring that all funds raised are spent on Road Safety works including preparation for municipalization of traffic;

Funding municipalities directly to undertake Road Safety related activities.

Alternatively, responsibility for Road Safety could be reduced in a number of ways:

Road Safety management on municipal roads may be funded (and managed) from federal or state revenue;

State Police currently have some responsibility for enforcement and safety on municipal roads, but the level of delivery is not strong. Investigation of changes to the current practices is recommended, including the option of full delivery of non-automated enforcement by State Police taking over all enforcement on Municipal roads, in a management partnership with the Municipalities. This will also reduce duplication of infringement issuing staff and appeals processes.

Some of these suggested solutions may require changes to the 1988 constitution and the amendment in 2014 (amendment number 82).

Recommendation 7.2: Municipalities must take more ownership of the Road Safety problems on the roads for which they are accountable, and federal and State should assist with this change. Mechanisms by which the situation may be improved include:

Ensure accountability is for undertaking genuine Road Safety programs, not naïve but well intended local education programs;

Employ the new national database to publicize Road Safety records of municipalities and create more demand for safety from the local communities;

Performance and project tied funding by state and federal governments;

More effective funding support for Road Safety works, including more rigorous control of the expenditure of funds raised for Road Safety (such as from DETRAN, speed cameras, etc.) to ensure they are genuinely spend on Road Safety;

Assistance to Municipalities in identifying the real crash blackspots on their road networks and ensuring the Road Safety works are targeted on the basis of this sound evidence rather than to appease residents perceptions of safety;

Delivery of strong sustained seat belt, helmet and speed enforcement on local roads by municipal agents;

Specified percentages of municipal revenue to be dedicated to genuine Road Safety works selected based on Road Safety benefit-cost ratios, and monitored by the State.

Recommendation 7.3: Establish State Government-Municipalities Road Safety Liaison Committees in each state, chaired by the State Lead Agency for Road Safety to galvanize and facilitate Road Safety activities on municipal roads (including advocating the solutions in this section), and drive an evidence based, safe systems approach to Road Safety.

All recommendations in area of opportunity 7 are identified as medium term with elements of recommendation 7.1 being longer term to achieve.

5.8Area of Opportunity 8: Management of the Road Network

Recommendation 8: Adopt Safe Systems principles in determining planning, design, retrofitting, maintenance and operational guidelines, standards, and decisions regarding Brazil’s roads, with increased focus on roadsides. Works should be delivered according to the following priorities: (i) Highest: works which prevent the mechanisms of injury or death (such as barriers, with safe end treatments, median separations, roundabouts); (ii) Medium: works which force speeds down to reduce crash forces; and (iii) Low: works which assist the road user not to make an error (e.g.: signage).

The core role of Road Safety engineering works should be expanded from the view that Road Safety is largely the cosmetic add-on of ‘signs and lines’, in the optimistic hope that these will cause drivers and road users to behave safely. The “guide the driver” approach to Road Safety (with signs, lines, and education) has failed worldwide and Road Safety has moved from assisting the driver to the safe systems approach of preventing the serious injuries and deaths despite inevitable human error.

Recommendation 8.1: Provide more forgiving roadsides on high traffic volume roads with serious crashes:

Establish an immediate policy of providing forgiving roadsides (preferably barriers but also clear zones) and full and forgiving median separation on all new high speed divided carriageway roads. Choices of road design treatments should consider motorcycles where they are involved in serious off road crashes;

revise design guidelines which allow for high speed dual carriageway roads with medians which are unsafe (such as unprotected ditches, headwalls, trees, and poles) or allow for errant vehicles to cross the median risking head on crashes.

Recommendation 8.2: Review planned road rehabilitation and construction expenditure with a view to dedicating at least 10% of funds to proving forgiving roadsides rather than a continuing focus on improved road surfaces. Forgiving roadsides are more effectively created through barriers not clear zones (which by the standards in use are much smaller than genuinely required to provide safety).

Recommendation 8.3: Address the poor safety record of undivided rural roads by providing safer roadsides, through:

Preferably barriers but also clear zones especially on curves;

Wider sealed shoulders, avoiding drop-offs on the edge of the travel lane;

Improved management of speed (see next set of recommendations);

Improved roadside delineation, particularly rumble strips or profile line marking.

Recommendation 8.4: Undertake iRAP (International Road Assessment Program) rating on a selected sets of federal and state roads in Brazil and fund treatments to address identified weaknesses.

Recommendation 8.5: Where crash data allow, commission analysis to establish black spots and black lengths of roads and engineering solutions which have the potential to deliver significant casualty savings and deliver a costed program of infrastructure improvements, addressing the locations. Careful data preparation should allow for evaluation, including pre-change crash data and exact dates of start and end of works at each location.

Recommendation 8.6: Establish a funded program of demonstration projects in pedestrian casualty crash areas. Amenities for pedestrians are often inadequate in many cities and on many rural roads around population centers where pedestrians walk along the road. The recently released WHO Pedestrian Manual⁶⁴ could assist treatment selection. In 2012, over 8,000 pedestrians were killed and over 40,000 were seriously injured in Brazil.

Recommendation 8.7: Adopt improvement for pedestrian safety, including:

Allowing for pedestrians to cross main roads in one movement rather than being stopped in the median by the signal cycle, or better still proving overhead crossings and pedestrian fencing;

Provide more time to cross the road at signalized crossings;

Move towards safe system speed limits where pedestrians cross roads;

Vigorously enforce pedestrian right of way at crossings.

Currently, traffic flow appears to be a priority over pedestrian safety.

Recommendation 8.8: Factor in pedestrian amenities for safe crossing in bus lane design. Increased accommodation of bus transport through the provision of bus lanes has clear advantages for public transport and buses offer increased safety for occupants. However, the rigid more vertical fronts of buses result in much more severe injuries and a higher probability of deaths for pedestrians when struck by a bus, even at low speeds. Thus, planning for bus lanes should include increased amenity for pedestrian crossing, and placement of these crossings should be carefully considered in relation to the location of bus stops and the obscured vision of pedestrians for other drivers created by buses.

Recommendation 8.9: Review and revise land use planning policy in relation to impacts on Road Safety, especially in relation to safe provision for generation of pedestrian traffic as well as vehicular traffic. Good safety oriented land use planning can reduce the need for road transport, reduce the need to cross roads, and thus reduce exposure to risk.

Recommendation 8.10: Review laws and policies to better prevent and better manage the safety risks created by encroachment of shops and buildings into the road reserve. Encroachment is a significant Road Safety issue because of the pedestrians drawn to the roadside shops, the lack of space for pedestrians to walk safely, and the lack of space for improved road design.

Recommendation 8.11: Establish sustainable well-funded programs of evidence-based demonstration projects on high casualty crash rate federal and state non-dual carriageway (and dual carriageway if high casualty crash rates exist) roads, and begin selecting and planning the first round of works for commencement in 2016.

Recommendation 8.12: Establish a funded program for the installation of roundabouts, which reduce collision severity, and slow traffic when correctly installed to require a significant change of angle in negotiating the intersection, and thus improve safety for pedestrians as well as vehicle occupants. Mini roundabouts should also be included to improve safety of smaller intersections. The design of the mini roundabouts should still ensure that vehicles are forced to an appropriate change of direction at the entry to the intersection to capture the benefits of the roundabout.

Recommendation 8.13: Stop the construction of ‘open’ (or ‘hamburger’) roundabouts and retrofit closure of existing examples. The design of open roundabout intersections removes their Road Safety value by having the main highway going straight through the middle of the roundabout. The advantages of lower angles of collision and reduced speeds at the roundabout are therefore circumvented. The design and installation of such roundabouts should be stopped immediately, and a program of retrofitting to prevent any vehicles from going straight through the roundabout should be initiated and planned (for funding and implementation over the next three years).

Recommendation 8.14: Ensure responsibility and accountability for Road Safety improvements by private companies managing (concession) toll roads though contractual arrangements, including and commitment to articulated outputs and clear, measureable ambitious Road Safety targets in death and injury reduction outcomes. These must be monitored and contracts must include substantial financial consequences.

Recommendation 8.15: Design / retrofit roads with off-road bicycle lanes, where bicycle use occurs. Bicyclists are a substantial component of road deaths and injuries in Brazil (with over 1,400 deaths and over 8,800 serious injuries). Bicycle safety should be improved by the provision of off road cycle-ways, and by reduced traffic speeds.

Recommendation 8.16: Training and management are required to improve the safety of roadside work practices, which on road observations show are currently inadequate.

Recommendation 8.17: Knowledge transfer is called for to address a number of factors which limit the progress towards safer road designs and operation, including:

A continuing strongly victim blaming culture, which is support by the behavioral focus of publicly promoted Road Safety interventions (which are focused on drink-driving, distraction, etc. not the road);

A continuing focus on roads for cars and trucks, while the safe amenity of vulnerable road users (pedestrians and two-wheeled vehicles) remain a secondary priority;

A common view that Road Safety is about the cosmetic add-on to guide road users (signage and line marking);

Safe system principles are not well known and are poorly understood, even in some Road Safety circles;

Safe systems principles are seen as beyond the financial reach of Brazil and mistakenly seen as irrelevant for the level of expenditure the country has for Road Safety.

Recommendation 8.18: Within roads agencies especially at state levels, realign organizations to address structural factors that underlie the slow progress towards safer road designs and operation:

The small number of Road Safety staff who have a better understanding of safe systems are typically marginalized and disempowered;

Road Safety is often restricted to control of lines and signs only and may have no input to new road design and building, intersection management, or road design guidelines.

Recommendation 8.19: Improve the roadside safety furniture, including:

Unsafe end terminals on guardrail, such as fishtails and sloped ends;

Unsafe ends on concrete barriers and bridge walls, including vertical concrete ends and sloped end terminals (often known as launching pads for the way cars go airborne on impact);

Guardrail which has been damaged in crashes and is no longer effective must be repaired;

Power and other poles are placed near roads creating risk of impact with infrangible objects. Policies to place these as far from the road as possible or protect them with barriers (especially poles on the outside of curves) will significantly assist Road Safety.

Recommendation 8.20: The state road authorities in some states collect animals from the roadway to prevent serious crashes into animals (especially at night). However, these animals are maintained on farms at significant expense due to inability to destroy or sell the animals. It is recommended that this inability to get rid of unwanted animals be resolved by allowing that the animal can be humanely destroyed or sold for other uses, after a short time in which the owner can (for a fee) collect the animal. This would allow expansion of the program and yet reduce net costs.

Within Area of Opportunity 8, a number of recommendations which will take medium term to fully embed as ongoing processes, can nonetheless be started in the short term, including 8.1, 8.2, 8.3 8.6, 8.7, 8.13, 8.16, and 8.19. Actions 8.1, 8.3, 8.7, 8.13, 8.19 all offer feasible opportunities for early wins in Road Safety delivery if they can be initiated in a short timeframe at state and/or federal levels. The remaining recommendations are suggested as medium term actions, except recommendation 8.9, which is longer term.