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Final Report Abstract
Many rural governments do not have an effective safety improvement program for their roads, yet crash rates are significantly higher on rural roads than on urban, state, and federal roads. Smaller agencies seldom have the financial resources or expertise to provide comprehensive roadway safety improvement programs and usually rely on input from the public, governing bodies, employees, and analysis of accident records. The result is a reactive program that leaves many road safety issues unnoticed and unimproved. A road safety audit is a proactive and comprehensive approach to identifying roadway safety deficiencies. This paper provides a practical means of identifying roadway safety deficiencies by developing and testing a road safety audit program for existing rural local roads.