Following the success of the Euro NCAP star-rating scheme in improving the passive safety of cars in the event of accidents, up to 4 stars are now awarded for the passive safety of freeways and other roads outside built-up areas (i.e. the protection offered to car occupants by the road in the event of an accident).

This is done on the basis of ADAC road testing under EuroRAP, a program developed by European automobile clubs and a number of national road construction authorities. The aim of EuroRAP, in addition to informing drivers about the passive safety offered by roads, is to encourage road construction authorities to deal with roads identified as having shortcomings in terms of safety.

The UDV (German Insurers Accident Research) shares the opinion of the ADAC that construction measures offer considerable potential for making roads safer and significantly reducing the number of people killed and seriously injured on them. However, in its current form the program developed by the ADAC can hardly be considered suitable as a means of identifying roads where there is considerable scope for measures to improve safety.

Only statistics about accidents that have actually taken place can provide the basis for an assessment. This will not necessarily agree with the assessment of the passive safety of a road ascertained in road testing based on EuroRAP. For example, there are many sections of road that have received the highest star rating although serious accidents have repeatedly occurred on them in recent years. This discrepancy should not come as a surprise because the ADAC road test does not identify shortcomings in terms of active road safety, such as curvy roads, narrow roads, surprising sequences of curves or a shortage of opportunities to overtake.

Systematic analyses of accidents throughout the road network are more effective than driving on the roads and making assessments based on visual evidence, as is done in the road test. In Germany there are tried and tested methods of identifying those sections of road on which poor road design or layout have contributed to a large number of accidents and serious accidents, and where changes are thus necessary and will be successful. These methods are explained in detail in the relevant regulations.

• The “Empfehlungen für die Sicherheitsanalyse von Straßennetzen (ESN)” (Guidelines for Safety Analysis of Road Networks) describe a procedure in which accident statistics are used to identify sections of road where there is great potential for improving safety by means of road construction measures.
• In localized investigation of accidents (regulated by the “Allgemeine Verwaltungsvorschrift zur Straßenverkehrsordnung VwV-StVO” (General Administrative Regulations on the Road Traffic Regulations) and the “Merkblätter zur Auswertung von Straßenverkehrsunfällen” (Codes of Practice for Evaluating Road Traffic Accidents)), the police, road traffic authorities and road construction authorities are obliged to identify and assess accumulations of accidents on roads, analyze the features of the roads that have contributed to them and initiate suitable measures. These measures may include traffic monitoring, traffic control or construction measures.

Federal states and local authorities thus have at their disposal the means to identify black spots or sections of road with a high number of accidents and introduce operational or construction measures to improve safety. It is now up to the federal states and local authorities to make rigorous use of the tools at their disposal.