Most of us haven’t any idea about what goes on behind the scenes to make our highways and local roads safer.
It’s not just the police, ambulance and fire services that respond to road crashes. After the accident is over, engineers move in to try to determine the cause.
That’s the job of Inroads traffic safety engineers, who check accident sites to analyse the related roading environment – the corners, camber, signage, visibility – as to whether they may have been a contributing factor.
They also liaise closely with the Police and NZ Transport Agency, reviewing accident reports and analysing accidents over a five-year period to see if any trends or patterns emerge.
Driver-causes, such as fatigue, alcohol and inattention, are also brought into the equation to see if the roading environment could be modified to compensate for those causes.
Our engineers work with the Tauranga and Western Bay Joint Road Safety Committee to take a combined approach to improving the roading environment through the 3 Es – Engineering, Enforcement and Education. Engineering provides improvements such as signage, barriers, renewing worn seal and improving road markings or there may be a need for an increased Police enforcement campaign or an education campaign by the road safety co-ordinator to improve driver awareness.
Police monitor crash patterns so as to target enforcement.
Keeping our roads safe is a complex business and Council needs input from everyone involved to ensure she has all the causal factors to help analyse why an accident happened.
While accidents on state highways are seldom unreported, minor injury and non-injury crashes on local roads can occur without being reported to the Police. That’s where locals can provide critical information about a bad corner, a tricky ditch, deep drains or unexpected environments for the unaware driver.
Road accident report forms are available from Council for residents to fill in. (please phone 571-8008 and Council will mail out the forms.)
These report forms are a valuable resource for our engineers to know where motorists are coming unstuck on the District’s local roading network.