Incorporating Road Safety into Pavement Management

TLDR

Road safety is increasingly recognized as a key objective of pavement management, with factors such as geometric design, materials, surface texture, shoulder type, and visibility influencing accident risk and prompting annual safety analyses. The study proposes a systematic framework to integrate pavement maintenance with road safety improvement, outlining coordination strategies and recommending remedial measures. This framework identifies pavement engineering relationships affecting safety—including pavement type, macro‑ and micro‑texture, and safety metrics—and discusses evaluation methods for incorporating these factors into management systems.

Abstract

Improving road safety through proper pavement engineering and maintenance should be one of the major objectives of pavement management systems. When pavements are evaluated in terms of safety, a number of factors related to pavement engineering properties are raised, such as pavement geometric design, paving materials and mix design, pavement surface properties, shoulder type, and pavement color and visibility. Each year there are voluminous annual reports on traffic accident statistics and discussions of such road safety issues as road safety modeling and pavement safety measurements and criteria. Although road safety may be considered a separate area, it should be incorporated into pavement management systems. The main pavement engineering relationships associated with road safety are identified, and the various aspects of road safety related to pavement management, such as pavement types, pavement surface macrotexture and microtexture, and pavement safety measurements, criteria, and evaluation methods, are discussed. A systematic approach is proposed for the coordination of pavement maintenance programs with road safety improvement and the incorporation or integration of safety management with pavement and other management systems. Finally, a list of possible remedial measures for road safety improvements associated with pavement maintenance activities is recommended.