A proactive decision support tool for road safety audit of new highway projects based on crash modification factors and analytical analysis: Algeria as a case study.

The most cost-effective way to improve the performance of a new road is to integrate road safety into the early phase of the project design. Therefore, the information obtained from the design phase is simply used to get an overview of the project in place. This article proposes a simplified analytical tool to target road safety problems proactively, even before inspection visits. The study area contains 110 segments of 100 m long (inspection intervals) of a highway under construction, sited in Algeria in the locality of Ghazaouet, Wilaya of Tlemcen. The methodology adopted consists of combining the International Road Assessment Program (iRAP) and the multiple linear regression method to obtain a simplified analytical model, which allows the prediction of road risk for each section of 100 m. The results obtained showed a 98% correlation between the model values and the real values obtained by the iRAP approach. As a complement to the iRAP method, this approach facilitates the anticipatory assessment of road risks by road safety auditors. Eventually, this tool will support and guide auditors to be acquainted with the recent trends in the domain of road safety.