Published on Monday, 17 March 2025 at 8:57:49 AM
The Shire of Dardanup has established a road safety assessment and risk analysis program for roads managed by the Shire and identified roads which have road safety problems based on historical crash data.
Utilising the Main Roads WA Crash Map tool, the Shire has been monitoring local road crashes and has established a prioritisation process to systematically work through and identify risks and recommend treatments in a proactive and practical approach.
The Shire has established a list of roads, identified which can be applied for through Black Spot funding and arranged for a risk analysis site inspection to be conducted to assess if action is required and what this is.
The process focuses on low cost, high impact solutions, and interventions which are widespread. Higher cost treatments are referred to Council for budget consideration, as part of the annual budget process. The Shire also applies safety improvements as part of their maintenance works to progressively improve the safety of the network when works are being undertaken.
The Shire invested in a staff member to complete the Road Safety Audit and Road Safety Engineering training, resulting in the Shire now having an accredited Road Safety Auditor. With an accredited Road Safety Auditor, the Shire no longer needs to get an exemption to conduct Road Safety Inspections, and the staff member can provide safety focused and safe system aligned advice to project designs and works planning.
Completion of the training builds the capabilities of staff to apply safe system application in the treatment of crash locations. It builds the engineering knowledge and experience to systematically make roads safer and aligned to better practice and safe system.
Safety analysis reports are completed with the Shire systematically working through the prioritised list as well as road safety concerns raised both internally, and from the public, and completing a Safety Analysis Report for each assessment. This allows the officers to look at the risks and apply the safe system approach to prevent killed and serious injury crashes and to improve the safety performance of the network. This process has been supported by the executive team and as determined, the Analysis Reports are presented to the Executive to endorse the recommendations and support the budget for the works to be completed.
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