ABSTRACT SUMMARY

Roadway factors, like the design of the road and the area around it, are important for traffic safety. Poor
road design can cause accidents directly or create conditions that lead to driver mistakes. The shape and
layout of roads affect how often and how serious crashes are.

To reduce accidents, it's important to use ideas like "Forgiving Road Side Design" and "Positive Guidance"
in road engineering. These approaches help make roads safer and easier to navigate.

Programs like the International Road Assessment Program (iRAP) use road safety audits, called "Star
Rating" reports, to identify risks in road designs. These tools help countries find and fix dangerous road
features.

Intersections are dangerous, and most accidents there are due to driver mistakes. This study presents a
new way to assess risks at intersections by detecting conflicts between what drivers intend to do and
what is expected of them. The method uses Bayesian inference and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V)
communication to share information between vehicles. Field experiments showed that considering how
vehicles interact is important for understanding and improving intersection safety.

This study used a driving simulator to examine how roadside infrastructure influences drivers' speed and
lateral vehicle placement. It reviewed data from the Roadside Infrastructure for Safer European Roads
project, which identified lateral positioning and speed as key factors in crashes. The study included
various roadside features like trees, guardrails, barriers, panels, and emergency lanes. Findings showed
that drivers tend to move away from safety barriers and slightly slow down when they first encounter
them. The presence of safety barriers had an effect regardless of their type and size. Trees affected driver
speed only when they were close to the road edge (within 2 meters) on rural roads with an 80 km/h
speed limit, and this effect diminished quickly. Trees further from the lane (more than 4.5 meters) did
not influence speed. The study suggests that trees along the road are particularly dangerous because
drivers do not adjust their behavior in response to them.

The paper reviews and compares crash risk factors related to road infrastructure to rank them based on
how dangerous they are. This work was part of the SafetyCube project, which aimed to identify and
measure the effects of various risk factors and safety measures. The project created a Decision Support
System (DSS) for road safety.

The review included studies on different infrastructure-related risk factors, organized into 10 categories
with 59 specific factors, such as road alignment issues, cross-section characteristics, road surface
problems, workzones, and junction deficiencies. Experts from various organizations helped identify
important topics for the DSS.

The methodology involved:

1. Searching for relevant international studies.

2. Selecting studies based on strict criteria.

3. Analyzing the studies' design, methods, and limitations.

4. Summarizing the findings and performing meta-analyses when possible.

A total of 243 high-quality studies were analyzed, resulting in 39 summaries. These summaries helped
rank the risk factors into three groups:

1. Risky (11 factors)

2. Probably risky (18 factors)

3. Unclear (7 factors)