Adapting the Road Safety Audit Review for Local Rural Roads (MPC ...

RSAR reports were analyzed based on engineering judgment. This providedadditional insight into evaluating the level of expertise required. These RSAR reportswere compared with data the groups had collected in their prototype audits to ensure thatconclusions in the reports were the same as conclusions in the findings. Anotherimportant aspect of these reports was simply to see if there were any differences in theway the various groups reported. The RSAR reports are contained in Appendices D andE.3.2.4. Analysis by Local Rural Road Functional ClassificationA fourth level of analysis evaluated safety needs stratified by the functionalclassification of each roadway sector evaluated. The purposes of these evaluations wereto assess needs for training and/or the ability of each group to assess safety needs.Considering the safety deficiencies by road type, stratified by the issue of urgency,provided an opportunity to evaluate both expertise and classification issues. These werepotential tools to determine if classification issues resulted in differences in identifyingand classifying the urgency of improvement.Ideally all identified “safety needs” would be corrected to the appropriatestandard. However, implementing improvements in the real world revolves around howthese ideals are tempered with user and cost factors. For example, a vertical fifty-footdrop off adjacent to a roadway is an obvious hazard. However treatment alternativesrange from flattening the cross-slope to an acceptable level, providing guardrail,providing delineation, to doing nothing.48