European Common Standardized Certification Methodology for Road Safety Experts

The European Parliament and the European Council issued the Directive, 2008/96/CE on road infrastructure safety management, foreseeing safety checks, training and certification of road safety auditors. Due to EU rules, the directive is mandatory ONLY in the TEN-T road network, meaning the major European highways, while the highest number of fatalities occurs on the local and regional roads. To overcome this barrier, the PILOT4SAFETY project is applying the Directive's approach to some selected secondary roads in 5 regions of different EU States, in order to share good practices and define a common standardised certification methodology for road safety experts.The pilot project is being developed in 5 different phases:1) Development of a new Curriculum for the training of Road Safety personnel, mainly based on Road Safety Audit and Inspections of secondary roads, foreseeing a specific certification; 2) International agreement between the 5 participating States about the validity of the certification in each State; 3) Training of the future auditors and inspectors; 4) One Road Safety Audit and Road Safety Inspection in each State, performed by an international team of the trained auditors or inspectors; 5) Evaluation of the results and final recommendations for a European Common Certification Methodology.The expected outcomes are:a) The application of the same curricula for the training of auditors and inspectors of 5 EU Regions, based on the main results from EU Research; b) An agreement between the involved Regions about the reciprocal validity of the certification of the road safety personnel trained during the study; c) International agreement about common standards for training auditors and inspectors; d) Recommendations for a common certification procedureDue to the high transferability of the project results, a relevant number of EU and non EU States will be able to use the recommendations for setting up their own certification system to ensure safety due to road infrastructure management. This paper illustrates the findings after 15 months out of 24 of the project's lifetime (50% of phase 4 completed).