What is Star Rating?

The Road Protection Score (RPS) is a scale for Star Rating roads for how well they protect the user from death or disabling injury when a crash occurs. The aim of the assessment is to evaluate the safety that is 'built in' to the road through its design, in combination with the way traffic is managed on it.

Data on road design and the standard of a road's safety features is collected by drive-through inspections in specially equipped vehicles. Trained inspectors assess and score each road's safety features and hazards, either in real time (as the road is driven), or later from video images captured along the route. This standard inspection formula can be used on a variety of road types and allows roads across Europe to be assessed and compared on the same basis. EuroRAP's Star Rating differs from normal road safety audits in that the aim is to assess the general standard of a route not identify individual blackspots.

Road elements can be recorded quickly and easily using the specially designed EuroRAP digitising tablet

The RPS is a new scale which will be continuously improved as the evidence builds - the current path finding programme of road inspections and Star Rating already includes 8 countries globally.

Road authorities across Europe currently have different views about the technical importance of a road's Star Rating. In several countries, authorities and motoring organisations are engaged in significant research and discussion on road protection standards and their relationship to speed limits or road engineering standards.

The Star Rating tends to be regarded as more important in countries and regions where accidents are sparse and patterns random. In these countries the location of the last accident is no guide to the next - one unprotected tree out of hundreds is no more likely to be struck than any other. But in other countries accidents are regrettably so frequent that the information from accident records and site studies alone allows identification of priorities and the treatment needed.

As the evidence base grows, the relative contribution of EuroRAP's protocols in helping generate priorities and countermeasures in different circumstances will become clear. Whatever the immediate priorities for action, in future, road design and layout should neither invite human mistakes nor allow the consequences of a mistake to be fatal. Safe roads mean roads which are both "self-explaining" and "forgiving".