Smart road safety assessment

According to recent studies, road crashes is the largest cause for deaths worldwide in the ages 10-21 years. Poor road design is one of the reasons behind these figures.

International motor organisations, such as the AA in the UK and Motormännen in Sweden, have formed iRAP (International Road Assessment Programme) to assess the safety standard of the road networks worldwide and to suggest improvements of the road design.

Sweco has worked as a partner to iRAP for several years and have provided the programme with personal expertise and development of technical solutions for road safety inspections. Sweco has developed RAPID, a system specially designed for iRAP inspections. The system is easily brought to a new site and installed in 10 minutes in a car. It makes it possible to efficiently gather necessary data about the road and record video of inspection routes for quality assurance or complementary assessment at the office.

The data is processed to produce a map of the inspected roads, where sections are coloured after their associated risk ranging from one to five stars. In principle, a five star road is one where the probability of a crash with fatalities or serious injuries is very low.

Within the iRAP programme Sweco has participated in projects in Nigeria, Kenya, Iceland, UK, Sweden and Ireland among other countries.

For more information contact Bengt Djuvfeldt,