Dubai Auditing of Existing Roads – Innovative Action Decade
Based on the Safe System Approach policy adopted by Dubai's Roads & Transport Authority and current practices, not all road accidents are caused by reckless driving, many of them are a result of flawed road design. Dubai traffic safety strategy set a challenging target to reducing fatalities to 1.7 /100,000 population by 2026. In 2019, RTA stepped up its commitment to road safety and conducted a thorough safety audit on existing roads on a total road length of over 1000kms.
In 2019, the RTA carried out a comprehensive Road Safety Audit (RSA) of approximately 1000Kms of existing roads as a systematic process for checking road safety deficiencies. 3,823 injury crashes were reported on the audited roads during the five-year period from 2014 to 2018. The RSA study report identified site-specific and general road safety problems along with recommendations. The project objectives were: • Reduction of fatalities /100,000 population from 2.3 in 2019 to 1.9 by 2021. • Reduction of fatalities /10,000 registered vehicles from 0.7 in 2019 to 0.5 by 2021. • Reduction of pedestrian fatalities /100,000 population from 0.6 in 2019 to 0.4 by 2021 • Reduce the whole-life costs of a scheme by preventing future accidents (average cost of a fatal collision is estimated to be AED 3.3 million.) • Analyze locations with recurring traffic accidents and apply preventative actions. • Overall objective is to meet the 2029 safety target of 1.5 fatality/100,000 population.