Abstract: In the year 2008, there were 218,963 crashes on Italian roads. The total number of fatalities was 4,731 and the total number of injured people was 310,739. These data highlight the social costs represented by traffic accidents in Italy and justify the important effort that is currently being made to promote traffic safety. One important step to gain this goal is the improvement of the existing road network. The paper focuses the attention on the actual regulation about the road design. In particular this regulation is formed by the “Functional and Geometric Design Standards for Road Design” published in 2001 and by the “Functional and Geometric Design Standards for Road Intersections” published in 2006 that refers to intersection and interchanges design. The respect of both these standards is mandatory for new design, whereas they are only a reference for the rehabilitation projects of existing roads for which more flexibility is allowed. In all, this regulation is quite complex for the design of new roads even though it is characterized by a rigidity that in some condition can cause a difficulty in the insertion of the alignment in the territory. The ancient history of the Italian country influence the existing road network in terms of network layout and architectural and landscape constrains. Moreover the possibility to adopt solutions different from those led down in the standards (only for archaeological, social, economic and environmental considerations) requires an authorization process based on the safety performance of the project. The lack of a regulation for the re-design of existing roads and the necessity to demonstrate that the project solutions not consistent with the standard, enhances traffic safety, led to several researches in this field, in the attempt to develop useful tools to evaluate the safety conditions of the existing roads and the safety performance of new design proposals. In the paper an overview of National and International research projects developed by Italian researchers in the field of Geometric Design is presented.
Publication Year: 2010
Publication Date: 2010-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 1
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