Thousands of kilometres of roads across Ireland are to be given a star rating on how dangerous they are in the event of a crash.
The Republic's network of main roads is being checked by teams of road engineers and each road will be given a rating of between no stars and four stars depending on how dangerous it is after a car crashes.
The scheme is similar to the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) which gives car models star ratings for protection levels to occupants and pedestrians in the event of a collision.
More than 6,000 kilometres of roads are coming under scrutiny, comprising all the main roads in the Republic.
However, the majority of Ireland's roads, a further 90,000 kilometres of smaller roads, will not be examined initially.
The rating system has been devised as part of the European Road Assessment Programme (EuroRAP) in co-operation with motoring bodies and road agencies across Europe. AA Ireland will publish a list of road star ratings in the first half of next year.
In deciding a road's star rating, the road surveyors will consider three main types of collisions.
They are:
Head-on crashes - how well is traffic separated and what disincentives to over-taking along dangerous stretches of road are there;
Run-off crashes - how well are drivers protected against hitting rigid poles, signs, lampposts and trees or going down embankments if they leave the road;
Junction crashes - to what extent could a junction layout or the frequency of turnings contribute towards crashs;
Conor Faughnan of AA Ireland told The Irish Times that work on examining Ireland's main roads was "well under way. In fact we're beginning to analyse the results from it. We are likely to publish, in partnership with our colleagues in Northern Ireland, between March and May of next year. Basically what it says is that once the car has gone out of control what does the roadside do to make it more forgiving. So it will audit things like trees and road furniture on roadsides," he said. He explained that the information gleaned from the roads survey would inform the National Roads Authority (NRA) about what improvements to make and where to make them.
"It is a great statistical tool for the engineers to target where they make their improvements and it's become very popular in that road engineers all over Europe have become active participants," he said.
"In Ireland we do have the advantage of having one of the biggest road spends in Europe. The NRA thankfully has the means to do something. Certainly it would be embarrassing for us all to identify killer roads and then do nothing about it."
Ireland's roads are believed to be mid-table in terms of safety in the event of a crash. Best performers are generally accepted to be Sweden, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, but Ireland's roads are considered to be safer in the event of a crash than Italy, Spain and Portugal.
In March 2005, AA Ireland published a list of the most dangerous roads in the Ireland based on crash statistics, as part of the EuroRAP programme.
The six most dangerous roads were named as the N54 between Clones and Monaghan; the N53 between Dundalk and the Border; the N55 between Edgeworthstown and Granard; the N52 between Mullingar and Tyrrellspass; the N78 between Athy and Castlecomer; and the N75 between Thurles and the N8.
More than a dozen other roads in the Republic were identified as "medium-high risk".
These include just two sections of road in the east - the N81 between Tallaght and Baltinglass, and the N2 Ashbourne road in Co Meath - and just one section of road in Connacht: the N59 between Dromore West, Co Sligo, and Bangor in Co Mayo.
