COMMON STANDARDS FOR TRAINING OF EXPERTS ON ROAD SAFETY - RELEVANCE FOR SECONDARY ROADS

European Union's legislative mandate on road infrastructure safety is limited to the cross-border network. In this framework was issued the Directive 2008/96/CE on road infrastructure safety management. The implementation of the Directive's guidelines is mandatory only for the major European cross boarder highways (TEN-T), while it is well known that the highest number of fatalities occurs on the "secondary roads" not only in Europe but worldwide. To encourage Member States to apply the same guidelines also on national and regional road networks, the European Commission co-financed a study with the aim to extend the Directive's approach through a common training and education of road safety auditors and inspectors, entitled to practice at national and international level. This approach is a model in every situation where there is a need to train and educate a new generation of road safety professionals. The shared procedure will lead to a common standard of infrastructure safety management, with the appropriate flexibility to be adapted to specific local situations. The high replicability of the study's results and recommendations will allow a number of European and non-European central and local Authorities to set up their own training and certification system. The basic training documentation resulting from the project can be adapted to be used wherever requested and needed, where urgent upgrade and maintenance of the infrastructure asset is badly needed.