ROAD RISK SAFETY MANAGEMENT
Formal analysis of potential road safety hazards,
treatments or auditrecommendations in conjunction with
sound management practices and well planned remedial
programs will make a positive contribution to improving
safety.
The Road Safety Risk Management represents an approach to
managing safety issues on the road network and
prioritizing a wide range of road safety treatments as we
get back to engineering to improve road safety.
Road safety audits on unsealed roads
The vast
majority of the unsealed road network in South Kalimantan
has not been designed according to present design
standards but developed over time from what may have been
built for temporary access to hauling log and coal
transportation. This means that there is a very high
potential risk that roads are being built and maintained
on alignments and geometric standards that not in keeping
with current user expectations.
PT PCN has embarked on a Road Safety Audit in an effort to
provide a duty of care to the road users by
identifying and addressing potential safety hazards. The
purpose of the road safety audits was to assess the
potential crash risk along the routes and identify safety
deficiencies, taking into account the function and use of
the roads. In particular, consistency in standard along
the routes is important to ensure that the road
users' expectations of road conditions is realistic and is
not challenged. In other words to remove any 'surprises'
to the motorists.
The output for each of the safety audits was a list of
safety issues and possible remedial treatments, with an
emphasis on low cost solutions consistent with the
standard of road and level of use.
The major issues that were identified by the audits
related to:
• Road alignment: vertical and horizontal curvature,
crossfall,and sight distance.
• Intersections: sight distance, angle of approach,
signage.
• Drainage: culverts, table drains.
• Signage: messages, location of signage, visibility and
legibility of
signage, sight distance to signage, sign condition, sign
position.
• Delineation: guideposts, bridge markers, intersection
delineation,
delineation of roadside hazards such as drains and
embankments.
• Roadside: roadside vegetation, lateral clearance to
roadside objects.
Many of the recommended solutions were related to
maintenance practices (eg. maintaining the immediate
roadside clear of vegetation to assist sight distance
through curves), delineation (eg. marking culverts with
guideposts), and signage (eg. installing warning signs of
particularly sharp or unexpectedchanges in the horizontal
or vertical alignment).
Conducting safety audits on unsealed roads will assist PT.
PCN to identify and prioritize safety improvements and,
subject to the available resources, address over time the
many locations requiring attention.