Giving safety ratings to roads would help improve the UAE’s network

International Road Assessment Programme star ratings are based on road inspection data and provide a measure of the level of safety of the road.

ABU DHABI // The UAE should adopt a global road safety organisation's methodologies as a tool for improving its road networks and preventing traffic injuries and deaths, experts have said.

The International Road Assessment Programme (iRap), which is active in more than 70 countries, offers a range of tools to assess road risk.

The non-profit organisation issues star ratings based on road-inspection data and provide an indication of a road’s safety. Five-star roads are considered the safest, while one-star roads are the lowest rating.

“iRap is all about road attributes or how a road is designed and built,” said Akin Adamson, regional director for road safety experts Transport Research Laboratory in the Middle East.

“The UAE, which has not done any iRap assessment, can make use of iRap to upgrade the existing road network or improve the design of new roads.”

Inspections are carried out to identify infrastructure elements known to influence the likelihood of crashes occurring and the severity of crashes that occur.

“You video the road network, code the road attributes on iRap’s software and look at the star rating of the road,” Mr Adamson said.

“If you’ve got a three-star rating you can make use of iRap’s mediation library as guidance to improve the star rating of the road.”

Typically, the higher the speed, the lower the iRap star rating.

“One of the key attributes for iRap is you can jump a whole star just by dividing the road with a median strip and installing crash barriers, making it safer.”

iRap considers more than 90 proven road improvement options when giving a star rating.

Qatar has adopted iRap to assess the standards of its roads and aims to raise the safety levels of its high-risk roads to a three-star minimum rating.

“Given that the UAE is building lots of new roads, a star rating of roads can be done before they are built,” Mr Adamson said.

Michael Dreznes, executive vice-president of the International Road Federation, which promotes safer roads, said iRap had proven an effective tool for diagnosing engineering weaknesses in road networks and channelling investments where they were likely to make the greatest difference.

“Knowing where the issues and the problems are is very important, but the most important facet is doing something to correct the issue once the problem sites are identified,” he said.