Road accidents resulting in injuries are monitored by the County Council's road safety engineering team. Information supplied by Hampshire police is used to identify accident locations that may benefit from engineering measures to reduce the likelihood of more accidents occurring there.
Engineering measures are usually considered when four or more accidents have occurred at a single location, or when three accidents with similar features have occurred in a five year period.
Investigations will also be undertaken when significant accident patterns are identified over longer lengths of road.
When engineering measures are installed at an accident location, the team monitors it to see whether the works have made a difference. Sometimes this leads to new issues being identified and further works may be undertaken.
The annual casualty reduction engineering programme involves several different programmes/initiatives:
All fatal and potentially fatal accidents which occur on roads maintained by Hampshire County Council are the subject of an individual investigation by the Casualty Reduction Partnership.
The CRP consists of officers from the County Council, Hampshire police and the relevant district or borough council.
The CRP meets monthly to examine fatal and potentially fatal accident sites.
Officers visit all these accident sites to check whether measures to enhance safety are appropriate. Relevant issues include
the circumstances of the accident
whether other accidents have occurred nearby
The safety engineering team review the accident record before the site visit.
Safety schemes using relatively low cost measures such as signing, lining, bollards, high friction surfacing and vehicle activated signs.
A programme of surface dressing, resurfacing and retexturing works to improve the skidding resistance of the carriageway surface for roads with a higher than average proportion of accidents that have occurred in the wet.
A dedicated budget to maintain the various safety schemes across Hampshire.
Eg new traffic signals, a roundabouts or major junction alterations. This is only considered if other measures have proved unsuccessful.