A PRACTICAL SAFETY APPROACH TO HIGHWAY GEOMETRIC DESIGN INTERNATIONAL CASE STUDIES: GERMANY, GREECE, LEBANON, AND THE UNITED STATES

A practical procedure, which considers safety rules and criteria for the safety evaluation of new designs, redesigns, and restoration, rehabilitation or resurfacing (RRR) projects, is presented in this paper. The procedure is based on statistical investigations of speeds and design parameters in Europe, the Middle East, and North America. The main components of the procedure are: operating speed backgrounds, relation design backgrounds, skid-resistance backgrounds, and driving dynamic backgrounds, for tangents, curves, and transitions to curves, for different roadway types and topography classes. The procedure presented in this paper provides interrelationships between design parameters, driving behavior, and driving dynamics, in order to determine sound roadway alignments and/or to detect poor ones, and to positively influence the accident situation.