Ahadi - Assistant Professor, Deputy Head of Road Safety Dept.,Transportation Research Institute Tehran-Iran
Shabani - Head of Road Safety Dept., Transportation Research Institute Tehran-Iran

In a Road Safety Audit (RSA) and a Road Safety Inspection (RSI) the road infrastructure's safety level is tested. RSA tests the design of new roads or the reconstruction of existing roads, whereas RSI tests existing roads. RSA, therefore, aims to 'improve' the road safety before the road has been built or reconstructed. At present, not many RSA are carried out in Iran, but the few experiences that there are promise positive effects on road safety. The RSA has also shown its value in other countries. Making use of the RSA should therefore be encouraged. The RSA should become a quality brand name and should be anchored in a road authority's policy by means of subsidy, precondition, or obligation. RSI not only can be carried out periodically on an entire network, but also incidentally on road sections that have an above average number of crashes. Various judging methods are used in RSI, none of which have standardized procedures. For a more systematic use of RSI such standardization is desirable. One of the accompanying measures in the Start-up Program Sustainable Safety concerned the development and introduction of the road safety audit instrument in Iran. For this purpose Transportation Research Institute in 2004 developed Road Safety Audit Manual that was tested during the 2005/2006 period the experiences during this trial period have led to a number of RSA workshop RSA projects and have been incorporated in the final edition of Road Safety Audit Manual. The RSA is not yet fully applied on a large scale in the Iran. The RSI and RSA have many similarities. However, the RSI involves experts regularly and systematically visually inspecting the existing road network for all sorts of faults. In this paper both protocols have been fully discussed and due to the gap created in the understanding of RSA and RSI the author have suggested a methodology which would be most suitable for Iran and discusses the RSA and RSI and the road safety influence they can have.

Road Safety Audit, Road Safety Inspection, Safety Improvements, RSA Guideline