up in Australia, USA and New Zealand. In 2006,
International Road Assessment Programme or
iRAP was created as the umbrella non-profit
organisation to ensure strong global governance
and also to drive solutions that could work in
low and middle-income countries where crash
data is scarce (International Road Assessment
Programme, 2009). iRAP targets high-risk roads
where numerous road users are killed or seriously
injured, and inspects them to identify targeted
high impact and affordable safety engineering
countermeasures that can reduce large numbers
of deaths and serious injuries.
The availability of comprehensive, accurate
and ample data allows for two protocols of road
assessment programmes which use real crash
data to provide clear information on risk to further
identify and guide infrastructure improvements.
These two protocols include risk mapping; maps
produced using the crash history data showing
the risk of being killed or injured, and fatality
estimation for performance tracking; which
enables the tracking of the rate at which high risk
roads are eliminated. However, as good quality
crash data is rarely available, other methods for
assessing safety are used. The third protocol,
the star rating of roads for safety, provides a
methodology to measure the safety performance
of a road network. This is particularly valuable
where crash data records are unavailable,
inaccurate or lacking. Over 70 attributes known to
influence the likelihood and severity of crashes are
recorded at 100m intervals throughout the road
network. These attributes are then scored and
combined to reflect the overall safety of the road
by different road user category: car occupants,
motorcyclists, bicyclists and pedestrians. The
scores are then assigned one to five stars allowing
a graphic presentation of the overall safety of the
road network. With these protocols in motion,
various countermeasure programmes can be
conducted by relevant authorities in accordance
with budget planning through the safer road
investment plan.
iRAP Malaysia Pilot Study
Malaysia has a population of close to 30 million.
Its cumulative roads are more than 100,000 km.
nationwide, with 80% of these being paved roads.
In 2015, the number of fatalities on Malaysian
roads was 6,193 (Royal Malaysian Police, 2015),
marking an increase of more than 1% each year on
average over the last decade. Crashes in Malaysia
relate to network capacity and the non-separation
of opposing flows i.e. single carriageways, high
density of intersections, unfavourable road side
conditions as well as crashes involving vulnerable
road users. Motorcyclists, who account for more
than 60% of all traffic casualties, are considered
vulnerable road users.
In 2007, the AusRAP team co-ordinated the
Malaysia iRAP pilot study. The group consisted
of the Automobile Association of Malaysia (AAM),
Malaysian Road Safety Department (JKJR),
Malaysian Institute of Road Safety Research
(MIROS), Australian Automobile Association
(AAA) and the ARRB Group (International Road
Assessment Programme, 2008). The project then
was also supported by the Malaysian Government
through the Ministry of Works, Ministry of
Transport; private entities that are the highway
concessionaires - North-South Expressway (PLUS)
and ANIH Berhad (formerly known as MTD Prime
Sdn Bhd), as well as research and education
body – Universiti Putra Malaysia and KUMPULAN
IKRAM Sdn Bhd.
The Malaysian pilot project started with road
inspection works during March and April 2007.
The inspection collected multi-view, high definition
videos and geometry data. These images were
then coded in accordance with the iRAP inspection
manual by a coding team based in MIROS and
included staff from a number of key Malaysian
stakeholders. The iRAP inspections covered
approximately 3,700 km of roads, representing
approximately 6% of Malaysia’s paved roads. The
inspected roads included expressways and federal
roads in Peninsular Malaysia.
The star rating results of the inspected roads
represent the safety of the road infrastructure in
relation of the risk faced by individ ual members
of the four different road user groups mentioned
earlier: car occupants, motorcyclists, bicyclists
and pedestrians. A five star output represents
the safest form of road infrastructure design for
the prevailing speed environment, whilst a one
star rating represents poor infrastructure design
for the prevailing speed environment. The
9