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An In-Service Road Safety Audit (RSA) project was commissioned by the Ministry of Public Works (MPW) in Kuwait, which would be the first RSA to be completed in Kuwait. The project was intended to serve as a demonstration project, highlighting the concept and process of a road safety audit, in an attempt to illustrate the benefits of RSAs and how RSAs may improve the overall level of safety for the road users in Kuwait. For Kuwait's inaugural RSA Project, a roadway known as Kabd Road was selected. The roadway, which is perceived to be very dangerous and often referred to as the 'Death Road,' is located south of the metropolitan area of the City of Kuwait. Kabd Road was considered to be an excellent project to demonstrate the RSA concept since the roadway has some design features that adversely impact the safety performance. In addition, the road appeared to be poorly maintained at some locations, which also created some significant safety hazards for motorists using the roadway. Poor driver behavior of the motorists using Kabd Road would also a contributing factor to the dangerous conditions that exist on the roadway. This paper describes the demonstration project, including the process that was followed to implement an RSA in a region where RSA did not previously occur. The paper also provides some of the findings from the RSA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of considering three-dimensional (3D) sight distance in geometric design has been demonstrated by several researchers. However, little progress has been made in the use of 3D analysis in the design of highways. This can be mainly attributed to the complexity of the computations required for 3D analysis. This paper presents a new algorithm for calculating the 3D sight distance. The algorithm is considered more efficient, less computationally intensive, and more flexible than previously developed approaches. The algorithm is based on a parametric representation of the roadway and roadside features without any implicit approximation of the roadway surface. The paper presents analysis results of various alignment configurations to demonstrate the use of the algorithm and to examine the influence of different geometric elements on the 3D sight distance. The paper also provides an analytical tool that can investigate and determine the conditions under which a 3D analysis is considered necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In British Columbia, many highways are located in mountainous terrain and the costs of highway construction in these areas are high. One method of controlling construction costs is narrow medians but the safety consequences of using narrow medians were never determined. Recent research on safety in geometric design has focused on establishing quantitative relationships between collisions and cross-sectional elements using collision prediction models (CPMs) and collision modification factors (CMFs). In some situations, such as the use of narrow medians, it is difficult to find CPMs and CMFs that adequately describe the design scenario. In other instances, it is difficult to measure the safety in terms of collision reduction because of a lack of data or difficulty isolating the impact of a single design element on collision frequency. In these situations, reliability analysis can be used to evaluate the risk associated with a particular design feature. Reliability analysis is not intended as an alternative to quantify safety using collision frequency but represents a complementary method of measuring safety in terms of risk. In this paper, reliability analysis was completed on a series of horizontal curves with varying horizontal sight distance restrictions and the probability of being unable to stop within the available sight distance was calculated. The results of the study found that narrow medians combined with tight horizontal curves did not provide sufficient sight distance that vehicles would be expected to stop if an object was in a vehicle’s path. The analysis was applied to a case study of two constrained alignments in mountainous terrain of British Columbia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]