Improving safety
The OCs carry out day to day management of the network, which includes delivery of road accident reduction measures. Along with other parties, the OCs are stakeholders in delivering the Scottish Government’s road safety strategies including the Strategic Road Safety Plan. The strategy includes physical improvements to the network, as well as developing safety improvements at roadworks.
Improvement measures taken forward by the OCs are either:
• Safety schemes, including new signs and markings, reduced speed limits,
installation of passively safe roadside furniture, traffic signals and pedestrian
crossings, anti-skid surfacing, village gateway treatments, and new or
improved lighting.
• Minor improvement schemes, which may include additional lane or junction
markings, improvements to junction layouts, realigning roads, improving poor
road camber, removing tight bends, widening footpaths, strengthening
carriageway edges and widening roads. These schemes frequently include
safety-related elements.
These measures can be applied to specific sites or along a trunk road as part of a route accident reduction plan.
2.5.2 Safety improvements
The Moving Cursor Programme (MCP) screens accident records on the entire trunk road network in order to identify accident cluster sites. The MCP is run annually by the OCs and, traditionally, formed the basis for the identification of the annual programmes of Accident Investigation and Prevention (AIP) safety schemes.
The more dispersed nature of today’s accidents requires greater emphasis on the proactive removal of risk through large scale mass actions and route treatments. In accordance with the Strategic Road Safety Plan, initiatives aimed at reducing risk and mitigating the effects when accidents do occur, are included in the OCs’ annual road safety programmes. These complement the works identified through the MCP.
Over the year, the OCs have put considerable effort into identifying, developing and designing safety schemes for implementation. Over 100 schemes were taken forward across the network.
NE - BEAR
In NE, there was significant investment in the passive safety mass action plan programme. This included improving safety barrier, upgrading lighting columns with passively safe replacements on A90, and passively safe sign posts on A92.
Other safety schemes included pedestrian guardrail replacement in Dundee and Aberdeen, and installing high performance reflective road studs on A96.
Minor improvement schemes undertaken included safety barrier works on M90, junction improvements on A92 and A95/A96, sign improvements on A985, on A90 and road/rail safety fence improvements on A92 and A96.
The overall budget of £4.5m for safety
and minor improvement schemes was fully spent.
SE - BEAR
The main expenditure on safety schemes in SE was directed towards investigation and introduction of accident prevention measures, including completion of some schemes identified in previous years.
Safety studies for passively safe sign poles were carried out on A702 and A720. Signing strategy reviews continued on a number of routes. The OC developed various initiatives as part of the A702
road safety group, formed in response
to police concerns about the level of
road casualties.
The minor improvement programme was predominantly design-only, mostly for four schemes on A702 following a route review by the previous OC.
These and other smaller projects have progressed through design to provide schemes for construction early in
2008/09.
