What is Risk Mapping?

An important aspect of EuroRAP's work is to develop partnerships between road-user organisations and road providers, and to produce results that will be meaningful to the motoring public, policy-makers, highway providers and operators alike.

Maps make it easy to identify the safest and most dangerous road sections within a region or country and, by comparing maps for different countries, enable European comparisons of safety performance.

In recognising that the view of safety differs between stakeholders, depending on their role in achieving a safe highway network, EuroRAP maps give various insights into risk and can be used to support messages aimed at the differing needs and levels of expertise of the target audiences. Under EuroRAP's Risk Mapping protocol, safety indicators based on the road network, accident numbers and traffic flow can be used to produce four maps:

Risk per kilometre
Risk per vehicle kilometre travelled
Risk in relation to roads with similar flow levels
Economic potential for accident reduction

See the next section What Risk Maps Do and Do Not Show for more in-depth information. Further information can also be found in the EuroRAP Technical Reports available from the Library.

Road sections

A typical EuroRAP road section is 20 kilometres long with 20 deaths and serious injuries in just 3 years - as much as a major rail crash. However, this target can be modified as necessary to ensure that links of roads selected are meaningful and distinct to road-users (for example start and end at identifiable locations) and have broadly similar characteristics along their entire length (such as single lane or dual carriageway). Some short sections of road (e.g. link roads), and some that carry low traffic volumes are inevitable in the sample. These short sections (e.g. less than 5km), those that have small accident totals (e.g. less than 7), or carry low traffic volumes (e.g. less than 3,000 per day) are more likely than others to experience greater year-to-year variation in accident rate and are therefore more likely to change risk rating from one period to another.

For more detailed information on the criteria and methodology used, refer to the following Technical Reports:

Colour bandings

Using EuroRAP's Risk Mapping protocol, road sections are colour-coded according to five risk bandings indicating their level of accident risk:

	Low
	Low-Medium
	Medium
	Medium High
	High

Bringing data to a European norm

Due to differences in the definition and reporting of fatal and serious accidents across Europe the raw data collated for each country is adjusted to allow comparisons of relative safety risk.

To bring the data in line to a European norm, different thresholds for each risk rate banding (low, low-medium, medium, medium-high, high) are used. This adjustment is based on the ratio of the number of fatal accidents to the number of accident type (for example, fatal and serious, or all injury) collected for that country.

The aim of this adjustment is not to change one country's accident reporting practice to fit that of another, nor is it to artificially increase or reduce rates in any country. The adjustment simply gives a better estimate of relative long term accident rate for each link within a national network.

Where material included on the site has not been subject to this adjustment, and therefore, where it cannot be compared directly with other countries, this is clearly marked.