Specificity analysis of safety enhancement for rural roads in China

Rural roads are an important component of highway network and the major infrastructure for the farmers´ production and life. In recent years, the traffic environment of rural roads has changed dramatically, and the safety problems of rural roads have become more and more prominent in China. The proportion of accidents on rural roads increased year by year. The severe road accidents with lots of casualties happened frequently. The farmers have become the largest victim group of road accidents in China. The factors that leading to road safety problems of rural roads includes: (1) the road safety awareness of farmers is relatively weak; (2) the safety performance of motor vehicles is relatively poor; (3) the safety facilities on rural roads lack relatively; (4) the road safety management of rural roads lags behind. It is very urgent to implement the Highway Safety Enhancement Projects (HSEP) on rural roads. Due to the specificity of rural roads, the existing technical measures cannot be directly applied to the HSEP for rural roads. These specificities includes: investment, road environment, road users, vehicles, maintenance responsibility, traffic safety management, and engineering construction. New low-cost technical measures must be adopted or invented to fit the limit of the budget and the safety requirements.