The World Road Association recently allocated to the ARRB Group Group (Australia) the contract to produce the contents of the second edition of the PIARC Road Safety Manual to be released in 2014 in electronic format.

At PIARC's request, ARRB had carried out in 2012 studies to define the structure and contents of the Manual, under the leadership of a Task Force led by Mike Griffith (United States) with the participation of road safety experts from the PIARC Technical Committees on road safety, and the cooperation of the World Bank, the World Health Organization (WHO), OECD and the African Development Bank.

The aim of the second edition of the Road Safety Manual (RSM) is to produce an authoritative knowledge base and align with the following pillars of the Global Plan for the United Nations Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020:

• Pillar 1: Road Safety Management;
• Pillar 2: Safer Roads and Mobility;
• Pillar 4: Safer Road Users.

The new RSM will be a state-of-the-art resource that can assist all countries in fulfilling their road safety improvement objectives.

The RSM will involve three parts. Part I will include a preamble explaining the RSM purpose, the scope of the road safety problem in the world, and key developments. Part II will provide a strategic view of road safety including national policy/planning level content. Part III will cover technical material related to the safe planning, design, operation, and use of road networks.

Most of the chapters will organize the material as follows:

• Key principles for each of the topics (primary target audience - policy makers);
• Discussion to explain the key principles (primary target audience - road infrastructure managers and practitioners);
• Case studies and links to detailed technical material and other references (primary target audience - road practitioners).

The table of contents of the RSM will be the following:

Part I: Introduction
Preamble
Chapter 1: Scope of the road safety problem
Chapter 2: Key developments in road safety

Part II: Road Safety Management
Chapter 3: The road safety management system
Chapter 4: The safety system approach
Chapter 5: Effectiveness and use of safety data
Chapter 6: Road safety targets, policies, and plans

Part III: Safe Planning, Design, Operation, and Use of the Road Network
Chapter 7: Roles, responsibilities, and management capacity
Chapter 8: Policies, standards, guidelines, and other tools
Chapter 9: The human factor: Design for road user characteristics
Chapter 10: Assessing potential risks and identifying issues
Chapter 11: Intervention selection and prioritization
Chapter 12: Monitoring and evaluation of effectiveness of actions

Technical Appendices

The Road Safety Manual will be in the form of a website, with the possibility to print the sub-chapters. The original version of the RSM will be produced in English language. It will then be translated into French and Spanish. Other language versions will then be envisaged.