Road Safety for Canadian Practitioners: Module 4 - Solving Safety Problems

This module explores the process of road safety management including the key steps of screening, diagnosis, countermeasure selection, economic appraisal, project prioritization, and evaluation of effectiveness. It addresses both site-level and system-wide perspectives.

Before taking this module, it is highly recommended that learners complete Module 1 – Foundations of Road Safety and Module 2 – Measuring Safety (or bring an equivalent level of personal experience), and that they be familiar with basic statistics and economic assessment theory.

There are seven submodules, each of which includes a recorded lecture, a short quiz, and a handout with the lecture slides (PDF format). In addition, the course handout summarizes each submodule’s learning objectives, additional reading, and suggested exercises.

This course will run on desktop or laptop computers (Windows 7 or later, Mac OS X 10.9 or later) and on tablets or mobile phones (Android OS 5 or later, iOS 11 or later).

Learners will have access to the course for twelve months from the date of payment.

Learning objectives

After completing the following submodules, learners will be able to:

Submodule 4.1 – Network Screening (53 minutes)

• Identify different methods for network screening
• Identify data needs for various network screening methods
• Apply network screening methods through a variety of examples

Submodule 4.2 – Diagnosis (44 minutes)

• Identify collision trends and patterns based on reported collisions
• Assess collision types and severity levels
• Construct and apply collision and condition diagrams
• Assess supporting documentation – geometric analysis, operational analysis, traffic conflict analysis, human factor analysis, land development and traffic impact assessments
• Assess field conditions – roadway and roadside characteristics, traffic conditions, travel behaviour, roadway consistency, land uses, weather conditions
• Describe the safety data analysis process including the application of road safety audits and in-service road safety reviews
• Assess surrogate safety data (e.g. speeds, conflicts, yielding behaviour, compliance)
• Identify safety concerns associated with analysis

Submodule 4.3 – Countermeasure Selection (17 minutes)

• Identify potential countermeasures to address safety problems
• List design principles for safe intersections and road segments
• Apply collision modification factors (CMFs) for countermeasure selection

Submodule 4.4 – Economic Appraisal (25 minutes)

• Apply economic appraisal methods to selected countermeasures
• Compare the economic performance of various countermeasures

Submodule 4.5 – Project Prioritization (19 minutes)                        

• Describe the process for applying incremental benefit-cost analysis
• Apply incremental benefit-cost analysis for countermeasure prioritization
• Apply the ranking method of project prioritization

Submodule 4.6 – Safety Effectiveness Evaluation (17 minutes)

• Describe the difference between cross-sectional and longitudinal (before-after) studies
• Explain the process for conducting cross-sectional studies
• Explain the process for conducting before-after studies

Submodule 4.7 – System-Wide Safety Management (24 minutes)

• Describe the process for identifying safety problems at a system-wide level
• Describe the approach used to identify potential safety strategies at a system-wide level
• Explain how to prioritize potential sites for improvement

Instructor

Jeannette Montufar, P.Eng., PTOE, RSP₁ – MORR Transportation Consulting

Jeannette has more than two decades of experience in road safety, freight systems, vulnerable road users and traffic engineering. She is an international leader in road safety, particularly regarding the safe accommodation of vulnerable road users as well as large commercial vehicles. She has published more than 200 technical papers and reports, and has developed and delivered a wide variety of road safety courses for industry and academia. Jeannette was a professor at the University of Manitoba for 15 years and has received many national and international awards for her contributions to transportation engineering, in particular relating to advancing the safety of pedestrians and persons with disabilities.

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