Road Safety Audit Checklist Template and Example PDF

When conducting road safety audits, it's important to follow these general guidelines to make sure it is effective. The following are identified key elements to follow through as a guide:

1. The road safety auditors must be independent of the project designers and contractors, and they must be qualified to do the job. Road safety auditors must be experts from various relevant fields of expertise like traffic engineers, collision data analysts and safety specialists.
2. The road safety audit must still follow quality management principles and must be detailed and systematic, with the goal of “getting it right the first time”. To accomplish this, decision making must be data driven, and hazard identification must be proactive.
3. Data collection must be complete, accurate, reliable and in consideration if the road is new or existing. For new roads, road safety auditors must consider the flow of traffic, potential increase of crashes, routes for cyclists and pedestrians and to consider the communities living along the road. If the road is old or already existing, past data of accidents or design issues that was overlooked must be revisited by auditors to ensure that road has complied with the previous findings.
4. Consider the audit stage in identifying potential safety hazards. Each audit stage may present different safety hazards. For example, in the planning stage, the focus of the road safety audit here are design flaws and how it might affect road safety. When already in construction stage, focus will shift in assessing the visibility and road markings along with the traffic flow. This is a critical guideline in road safety audit to make sure it is accurate.
5. Equipment to use for road safety audit must be complete at the same time all auditors or members of the road safety audit team must have all the right tools and wear the appropriate and right fitting Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).
6. Utilise road safety audit checklist in identifying potential safety issues, this ensures that the items to be inspected are already properly listed and nothing important is overlooked. Each country may vary in inspection item, or it may vary according to each stage in inspection–road safety auditors must have this detailed in the road safety audit checklist.

To ensure these guidelines are followed during road safety audit, auditing team should be selected carefully and the auditors should use a structured road safety audit checklist during physical inspection.