The Verkhovna Rada made a revolutionary bill proposing to check the roads for safety at the design stage. For this purpose, the Law on Roads will be supplemented with an article on road safety auditing. This will make it possible to calculate in advance the occurrence of those "places of concentration of accidents" and at the stage of drawings make these sites safe. Autonews. ua talked with one of the developers of the bill and learned everything that is worth knowing about the innovation. Will reduce by 30% the number of accidents with serious consequences According to the World Health Organization, to which the authors of the bill refer, Ukrainian roads are one of the most dangerous in the world. "Ukraine ranks fifth in the number of deaths in road accidents after Malaysia, Argentina, Greece and Cambodia," says an explanatory note. The reason, among other things, lies in the standards of road design themselves, which seem to incite drivers to exceed speed and feel too freely, and pedestrians are tempted to run across dangerous roads. The task of road safety auditing is to minimize these risks by eliminating factors that affect road accidents. For example, in the UK, following the results of 30 years of the audit of safety, they came to the conclusion that the number of accidents with serious consequences for them decreased by one third. "This can be achieved, for example, by reducing the flow rate, reducing the likelihood of road conflicts by reducing the intersection of trajectories, reducing the distance that pedestrians need to travel on unregulated junctions. This will reduce the likelihood that there will be accidents, and if they do, it will mitigate their consequences - these will not be fatal accidents, but those in which people do not die, "explained autonews. ua one of the developers of the bill road expert Viktor Zagreb. How will auditors work? Now attempts to do something like that are being made by Ukravtodor - at the entrances to some settlements with a "through" movement they put "loops" in order to soothe traffic. In the future, every auditor will consider a new road project (at least of a local or international level) (a group of qualified specialists), and if there is a need, the auditor will write in the report: "With regard to such circumstances, I recommend placing at the entrance to such and such village brake islands ». Next, the designers will be required to consider the auditor's conclusion and, if they have no objections, they will add what he wrote. "The auditor can recommend to move the pedestrian crossing, change the design of the intersection (make a roundabout instead of unregulated). If the road is fast, it can recommend making a pedestrian crossing at different levels (underground or aboveground). Can recommend making an adjustable transition with a button. And it is not only about roads of national importance, but also in settlements as well. This can be applied in the projects of street reconstruction in Kiev and any other city ", - says Victor Zagreba. By the way, the idea may be inscribed here narrowing the width of the bands, which in European countries has established itself as an effective method to make drivers go slower. "You can do anything that does not prohibit norms and standards. Our norms and standards say that the bandwidth should be 3.75 m, but in a populated locality, when a lower speed is desired, then the band can be narrowed to 3 m or even 2.75 m. All this is regulated by the state building companies. Accordingly, the auditor, having considered the project of some kind of road, can say, conditionally, "You have here bands too wide, it will push to excessive speed. Why on the street at a speed of 40 km / h need a bandwidth of 3.75 m, which is wider than on the German autobahn? ". The auditor can recommend a bandwidth of 3 m. And then the designers will take his proposal into account, "the developer of the bill cites an example. How much does all this cost? According to the experience of EU countries, the cost of traffic safety audit is 0.5% of the cost of large projects, up to 3% for small projects. At first glance, it is expensive. For example, if the project costs 100 million UAH (so much can cost a road between two obltsentrami), then the security of "calculations on paper" will cost 500 thousand UAH. "But there are studies that the economic losses of the country from one death of one dead in an accident are about 12 million UAH. So to spend half a million on a conditionally a hundred-kilometer stretch of the road, if it saves at least one life (and this saves many lives) - this has a very high cost-effectiveness ratio. And this, if only talking about death. But there will be savings on car repairs due to accidents that will not happen, "said autonews. ua Victor Zagreb. Andrey Dovgan.

Original article: A new law: "Roads for the concentration of accidents" will be removed from the roads.