Analysis of Applicability of IHSDM into Korea and User Requirements for Development of Road Design Safety Assessment System

Road design safety assessment by existing tools and methods have normally been examined by expert judgements using design documents and on-site inspections. The existing methods, however, have two main problems such as insufficiency of objectiveness and inability to measure effects of accident countermeasures. This paper studies ways to develop a road safety assessment system through reviewing the IHSDM developed in USA. The crash prediction module of IHSDM calculate accident frequency and rate of roadway segments using accident prediction models and accident modification factors for safety evaluation. The methodology of evaluation and development of accident modification factors somewhat overcome the problems of the existing methods. In spite of these advantages, IHSDM could not relevantly reflect characteristics of domestic rural roadways since it overestimate the number of accidents and rate of korean rural roadways. Especially, IHSDM may not evaluate or consider land use patterns of Korean roadways, and futhermore, original environment on base conditions used to develop IHSDM may not be different from ours. The user requirements being developed for a road safety assessment system for Korean roadways include enhanced flexibility and diversity of data input-output processes