A new design
The audit runs on the CAD model before anything is built, so each fix is a revision on paper.
Why audit a road before anyone crashes on it
A road safety audit is a formal, independent examination of a road or a design for what could cause crashes. Done in 3D, it finds what plan sheets and drive-throughs miss.
Crash data finds a hazard after the crashes
Crash-based safety programs are reactive by construction: a location earns attention only once enough people have been hurt there. A new design has no crash history at all.
- 38,000+people killed on US roads every year
- 4.4 millioninjured seriously enough to need medical attention
- Ages 1–54road crashes are the leading cause of death
- DesignThe road exists as a CAD model.
Road Safety Audit 3D finds the hazard here. The fix is a design revision.
- ConstructionIt is built as designed, hazard and all.
- OpeningTraffic arrives. For a road already in service, a LiDAR scan brings it back within reach of the audit, on any day.
- First crashesPeople are hurt, one at a time. No single crash marks the spot.
- A crash patternEnough crashes accumulate to stand out in the data.
A crash-based program finds it here. The fix is reconstruction.
What a road safety audit is
A road safety audit (RSA) is a formal examination of a future or existing road by a qualified, independent, multidisciplinary team, looking for conditions that could lead to crashes. It considers every road user: drivers, pedestrians, cyclists and transit. And it is proactive: it asks what could go wrong, rather than counting what already has.
Traditional audits rely on plan sheets, site visits and the auditors' experience. That is thorough where the team looks and blind where it does not. Sight distance in particular depends on the full three-dimensional shape of the road and everything beside it, which is exactly what a drawing flattens.
New designs and existing roads
The same analysis runs on either, so a design and the road it replaces are judged by one standard.
How Road Safety Audit 3D works
An existing road
A LiDAR scan captures the road, the terrain, the vegetation and the structures as they are today, and shows which curves, crests and intersections fail the standard right now.
What you gain
A Michigan State University study measured how sight distance relates to crashes, and why analyzing the whole road in 3D matters.
Read the sight distance studyBefore construction
A deficiency found on a design model costs a revision. Once a road is in service, the same fix means reconstruction: the throwaway and rebuild costs an audit avoids in the first place.
Without crash history
Crash data tells you where people were already hurt. A proactive audit finds the locations that have not had their crash yet.
Systemic, not spot checks
Every lane, every direction and every intersection is analyzed the same way, so nothing depends on which stations a reviewer chose.
Defensible
Each finding cites the standard, the parameter and the 3D geometry that failed it, which stands up in a design review or a courtroom.
Audit a road or a design
Bring a design file or a scan, and we'll show you the findings on your own project.