Development of a human factors road safety assessment tool: interim report

This interim report is a mid-point deliverable to the Highways Agency of the project ‘Development of a Human Factors Road Safety Assessment Tool’. The task detailed within this interim report is executed under the Agency’s National Framework Contract 118(387) HTRL for Research & Development Services. The work described in this interim report fully complies with the original task specification. Overview The report first presents a definition of human factors, and a justification of why it is important to explicitly consider such human element issues on the Highways Agency (HA) network (based largely on the number of highway accidents that have human error as a contributory factor). It then describes the human factors data collected during a comprehensive literature review, the human factors principles developed from this data, and the matrix structure used to display the principles (Phase A). Following that, it presents a review of existing HA design guidelines for the design of highways, highlighting gaps and conflicts between these documents and human factors principles. Then, the report proceeds to Phase B: a human factors assessment of a current HA site, including making suggestions to improve safety at this site based on the principles developed in Phase A. Finally, all the work to date is tied together by summarising the key findings and implications, and making recommendations for project continuation.