79th Infra 21 Seminar Addresses Road Safety Measures in the US

On Thursday, July 17 in the 8th floor meeting room, the 79th Infra 21 Seminar was held by the Infrastructure Research Division of KRIHS. Under the title “Development of Virginia's HSIP Using Safety Performance Functions, Dr. Lim In-kyu of Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) spoke on road safety management measures in the US. The lecture focused on Safety Performance Functions (SPF), which was developed by VDOT and is being adopted by other states in the US. The SPFs allow researchers to estimate the expected safety performance of a roadway segments as a function of its characteristics such as crash counts and daily traffic volume. Dr. Lim said that the results of studies using SPFs were very useful in establishing road safety measures for Virginia and the state was able to spend its transportation budgets in a more efficient and equitable manner. Korea has been studying road safety measures but has yet to established specific guidelines. All attendees agreed on the need to build a system for a more effective road safety management in Korea. The discussion covered various issues including the potential use of SPFs for improving Korea’s road safety.