Frequently Asked Questions

Who is iRAP?

The International Road Assessment Programme (iRAP) is a charity (Number 1140357, registered in England) with the vision for a world free of high risk roads. The charity is dedicated to saving lives through safer roads. iRAP works in partnership with government and non-government organisations. It co-chairs the safer roads and mobility pillar for the UN Deacde of Action for Road Safety. iRAP aims to enable

• assessment and Safety Rating of road networks where road deaths are likely to be concentrated

• identify high-risk roads and develop Safer Roads Investment Plans with high benefit cost ratios

• provide training, technology and support that will build and sustain national, regional and local capability

• performance tracking so that funding agencies can assess the benefits of their investments.

Road Assessment Programmes are now active in more than 60 countries throughout Europe, Asia, the Pacific, North and South America and Africa. This includes both locally-managed and supported programmes in Europe (EuroRAP), Australia (AusRAP), New Zealand (KiwiRAP), US (usRAP) and Korea (KoRAP) and regionally-supported country-specific programmes such as iRAP Argentina, iRAP Mexico, iRAP Kenya, iRAP Malaysia, iRAP India and iRAP China. All countries contribute to the global programme in a spirit of mutual support.

Why is tackling road deaths so important?

Every day, more than 3,500 people are killed in road crashes worldwide; 137,000 more are injured or disabled. Road trauma is a serious and rapidly worsening public health crisis. This crisis affects developing countries in particular, where nine out of 10 road deaths and injuries occur. Worldwide, road crashes are the leading cause of death for young people aged 10-24 and a global killer on the scale of malaria or tuberculosis.

What are the financial implications of road injuries to households?

In addition to the grief caused by road trauma, road crashes are often a factor responsible for tipping a household into financial distress. The loss of a wage-earner due to death or disability can be disastrous, leading a family into lower living standards and poverty.

The total cost of road crashes globally is estimated at over US$1,500 billion a year or 1-3% of GDP. The impact on the economy, transport, health and social services is extensive and creates a barrier to growth and development.

How does iRAP reduce deaths?

Simple, affordable improvements to road infrastructure have the power to dramatically reduce both the risk of crashes occurring and their severity. By investing in life-saving features like sealed shoulders, footpaths, safety barriers and traffic signals, high-risk roads can be made more forgiving - they can be made safe. iRAP's systematic approach helps make roads safe for car occupants, motorcyclists, bicyclists and pedestrians. For example, the iRAP Safer Roads Investment Plan in Malaysia identified opportunities to prevent more than 30,000 road crash deaths and injuries over 20 years and save almost US$3 billion ( Vaccines for Roads).

Who does iRAP work with?

At the heart of the programme is a spirit of cooperation between organisations involved in making roads safe. iRAP works closely with civil society such as autoclubs, charities, governments, funding agencies, research institutes and other non-government organisations to ensure that projects benefit from broad support and diverse expertise.

Who manages a Road Assessment Programme in a country?

An ideal iRAP programme is run and managed by local stakeholders reflecting their choices about what works for them and the institutional framework in a country. Often a National Road Safety Council is involved. Typically a government ministry or the Police might ask its road safety team to help define the busy network where road deaths are likely to be concentrated and provide data. The roads department might commit to deliver the identified countermeasures. A civil society member such as an autoclub active on the National Road Safety Council might project-manage and help communicate the work in public. A university, research institute or specialist company might give technical support.

How does an iRAP project get delivered?

iRAP's early pilot projects ( Vaccines for Roads) in Chile, Costa Rica, Malaysia and South Africa were delivered with the support of partners that it had been working with in Australia, Europe and North America. Today iRAP has a wide range of partners that can help develop and deliver a programme. iRAP projects can be delivered by local stakeholder staff, iRAP centres of excellence or openly procured. In particular, inspection and coding work which can be procured on the marketplace from a number of accredited organisations and firms as required. Recent work has been tendered and/or delivered directly by development banks, government agencies, national research bodies, universities, autoclubs, specialist transport consultancies and others.

How does iRAP inspect roads?

Using specially equipped vehicles, software and trained coders, iRAP enables detailed road inspections, focusing on more than 30 different features that are known to influence the likelihood of a crash and its severity. These features include intersection design, road cross-section and markings, roadside hazards, footpaths and bicycle lanes.

What is a Safety Rating and a Road Assessment Programme Star Rating?

Safety rating is a term which refers to rating the risk of travelling down a road. RAP programmes have two main forms of safety rating which are globally consistent allowing the safety of roads to be compared within countries and between countries.

The most common safety rating is the RAP Star Rating. This measures the inbuilt safety of the infrastructure on a 1-5 star scale. Star Ratings are based on road inspection data and provide a simple and objective measure of the level of safety which is 'built-in' to the road for car occupants, motorcyclists, bicyclists and pedestrians. Five-star roads are the safest while one-star roads are the least safe.

Star Ratings can be completed without the need for high quality and detailed crash data, which is often unavailable in low-income and middle-income countries. For more detail, see  Star Rating Roads For Safety: The iRAP Methodology

In many developed countries where detailed crash data and traffic censuses are available, the RAP risk rating measures the rate of death and serious injury on a road. This is the risk on a road of the system - road, vehicle and drvier combined.

Examples of both star rating and risk rating data across 23 European countries can be found in the on-line European Road Safety Atlas at http://atlas.eurorap.org.

What road features are included in the star-ratings?

The Star Ratings are influenced by more than 30 high-level road features known to be important in determining the likelihood and severity of a crash. These include:

• Type of road (eg divided or undivided)

• Delineation (eg edge lines, guideposts, centrelines);

• Horizontal alignment (eg straight or winding);

• Lane width;

• Shoulder width;

• Overtaking provision;

• Speed of traffic;

• Severity of roadside environment (eg trees close to the roadside);

• Number of intersections;

• Type of intersections (eg busy 4-leg intersection)

How are the Star Ratings developed?

The Star Ratings are based on a Road Protection Score (RPS). The RPS is based on an assessment of the features of a road which influence the likelihood of a crash happening and, in the event that a crash does occur, minimise the severity of a crash. These main types of crashes for cars and motorcycles are head on, run-off road and intersection crashes. Together, these types of crashes typically account for around three-quarters of all car and motorcycle crashes on rural highways.

For pedestrians and cyclists, the main crash types are being struck crossing the road or moving along it. Cyclists are also struck at junctions.

The model is based on worldwide research and the iRAP team worked with experts from Australia (ARRB), the UK (TRL - Transport Research Laboratory), the US (Midwest Research Institute) and Malaysia (MIROS) to develop this work.

How important is road infrastructure to road safety?

Roads are much more important in road safety than most people think. While driver behaviour and vehicle safety are very important, improving the safety of the roads themselves can make a big difference to road safety. In Europe, the United States, Australasia and more developed countries (eg Chile), the majority of road deaths are of vehicle occupants.

In many Asian countries in particular, the majority of road deaths are motorcyclists.

In many lower income countries, the majority of deaths are pedestrians.

Whatever the mix of road deaths in a country, the iRAP methodology targets how road deaths can be reduced cost effectively through safer infrastructure. The recommended countermeasures reflect locally how people are dying on the roads.

Several recent research studies have shown that, of the three key road safety areas: driver behaviour, vehicle safety and the safety of the roads, effort devoted to improving the safety of the road is most likely to be successful in reducing deaths.

The potential to save lives from footpaths, crossings, safety fences and dozens of low cost engineering countermeasures is quick, certain and high return. Without clear road layouts, signing and marking there is no guidance on how road users are supposed to behave nor rule of the road to enforce. The main risk factors in driver behaviour relate to seat belt wearing, drink and excessive speed. Motorcyclists can be many times more likely to be killed than car occupants - around 30 in developed countries.

Won't some roads get a poor Star Rating because of the types of people and vehicles that drive on them?

No. The Star Ratings take into account the safety features and hazards of the road only.

14. How are iRAP's Safer Roads Investment Plans developed?

iRAP considers more than 70 proven road improvement options to generate affordable and economically sound Safer Roads Investment Plans that will save lives. Road improvement options range from low-cost road markings and pedestrian refuges to higher-cost intersection upgrades and full highway duplication. For further details, see:  Safer Roads Investment Plans: The iRAP Methodology. These plans are complemented by best practice advice on implementation through the iRAP Road Safety Toolkit - www.irap.net/toolkit.

Aren't most crashes simply caused by bad drivers?

No. In the past, because human error contributes in some way to nearly all crashes, road safety policy focused on "fixing the driver". And many driversarefoolish or inexperienced, so driver training and education programmes - for example, on wearing seat belts - are crucial. Some drivers also behave with criminal disregard for the safety of others and they should expect tough policing and tough penalties.

But most crashes happen when normal people make mistakes-around 1 in 500 driving decisions can be wrong and the results can be tragic. Sober, responsible drivers obeying traffic regulations and speed limits can unexpectedly face a momentary situation with which they cannot cope. Safe roads minimise the chance of this situation arising, and if it does occur, they minimise the severity of the crash.

Why not just reduce the speed limit to improve safety?

Travel speed influences the risk of a crash occurring and its severity. However, speed limits are just one part of the road safety equation.

On many roads - particularly in built up areas it is not economically possible to have safety without reducing speed. The cost of crashes can also substantially exceed the economic value of speeding traffic up.

Speed and safety need not be mutually exclusive. Most of the world's safest roads are motorways. They are also the world's fastest roads and have been engineered for safety at speed. Economic development and the relief of poverty depends on road connections and trade routes. The cost of road transport and the availability of crucial services including health and education is significantly affected by journey times, as is the viability of businesses, particularly in regions peripheral to major markets.

How does iRAP's Risk Mapping work?

In regions where detailed crash data is available, iRAP produces Risk Maps that represent the actual number of deaths and injuries on a road network. Risk Maps capture the combined risk arising from the interaction of road users, vehicles and the road environment. The maps provide an objective view of where people are dying and where their crash risk is greatest.

What is iRAP's Performance Tracking?

Governments and funding agencies can benefit from measuring and reporting on the road safety outcomes of their investments. Star Ratings and Risk Maps provide objective measures that can be used to track road safety performance and establish policy positions.In the United Kingdom, for example, EuroRAP used Risk Maps to demonstrate that the government had achieved a significant reduction in high-risk primary route roads between 1997 and 2006. In the Netherlands, the government has committed to eliminating one-star and two-star national roads by 2020. Sweden has been using Star Rating to influence the setting of speed limits. iRAP has monitored how the Star Rating of Malaysia's roads improved after the crash countermeasures were implemented. In New Zealand, Star Rating is being used to track the performance of 10,000km of national roads.

What else does iRAP do to provide support and capacity to countries?

A leading aim of iRAP is to ensure that there is strong local ownership of each project. iRAP projects emphasise building and sustaining the capacity of stakeholder organisations through training and direct experience in using iRAP technology and software.iRAP also encourages and supports several continuing post-project activities to ensure that genuine road safety gains are made and the capability of stakeholder organisations continues to grow.