Further development of road safety monitoring in the course of the national implementation of EU Directive 2019/1936

The "Directive 2008/96/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19.11.2008 on road infrastructure safety management" (EU Directive 2008/96/EC), which was intended to raise the level of road infrastructure safety on the trans-European road network throughout the EU, was revised 10 years after its entry into force and the amendments were published on 26.11.2019 as Directive (EU) 2019/1936. The changes had to be transposed into national law within 2 years. This was done by the BMDV via ARS 25/2021.

One component of the original directive was the classification of the safety of the road network (Article 5 of EU Directive 2008/96/EC). In Germany, the procedure of the "Recommendations for the Safety Analysis of Road Networks (ESN)" was developed and introduced by the BMVI with ARS 27/2003. As part of the revision of the EU Directive, the hitherto reactive approach needs to be supplemented by more preventive aspects of a visual examination of the design features of the road, either on-site or by electronic means. On this basis, an assessment and prioritisation of the need for further measures is to be carried out. One component is the classification of all sections of the road network according to their safety level in at least three categories. A report on the result of this classification must be submitted to the EU Commission. In addition, the results of the network-wide road safety assessments will be followed up either through corrective measures developed either directly or following targeted road safety reviews.

The main task for Germany is the development of suitable road safety monitoring, as required by the amended Article 5 of the EU Directive from the member states. The process was developed within the framework of FE 03.0547/2016/FRB "Evaluation of the safety analysis of road networks" carried out on behalf of the BASt.

Already in the course of the process development it became apparent that the necessary data preparation is to be classified as decisive for the implementation of road safety monitoring by the BASt. This applies in particular to the relevant infrastructure characteristics to be taken into account as part of the proactive safety assessment. Some of the required data are of sufficient quality, but some of the available data do not yet have the data quality required for proactive network-wide security assessment. Still other data have yet to be collected or merged from databases available in the countries. The creation of the necessary data basis, the consolidation on a common road network basis (ASB) and preparation for the transfer to BISStra until the first implementation of the network-wide safety assessment for the federal trunk roads in 2024 is therefore still to be carried out by the BASt in cooperation with the federal states and the AdB.

The further development of the procedure developed within the framework of FE 03.0547/2016/FRB and in particular the creation of the basis for the transfer of the necessary data into BISStra cannot be achieved with the human resources available in the BASt. To support this task, external expert advice should therefore be commissioned. The expert advice should include in particular the following activities:

1. Query and review of the previous concepts for data storage / recording at the Federal Government/BASt, the Länder and the AdB incl. ASB conformity

2. Evaluation of previous data concept of BISStra including background and timeliness as well as relevance for security management

3. Evaluation of the ZEB data infrastructure with regard to its use for the implementation of the EU Directive

4. Compilation of a data catalogue of already available data records at the Federal Government/BASt, Länder and AdB including information on relevance, attributes, etc. as well as compliance with the ASB standard or efforts to achieve the same.

5. Identification and determination of the objects to be collected and their attribution. Creation of a data model (for BISStra and ASB) as well as for the points deviating or missing from the ASB Creation of an ASB change request so that the data can be stored and transported completely via ASB and OKSTRA.

6. Development roadmap for step-by-step adaptations of BISStra for the implementation of the EU Directive, incl. creation of specifications

7. Expert support and review of pilot applications of network-wide security assessment and classification at the BASt

8. Technical contact for the relevant actors