Developing highway geometric design guidelines for the 21st century

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Highway engineers have long recognized that the highway system consists of three main components: the road user, the vehicle, and the road itself including the surrounding environment and environmental conditions. A proper design of the highway system requires not only understanding these three components but also understanding how these components interact together. Yet, highway design practices are based on guidelines that were mostly developed over fifty years ago. These guidelines paid little attention to the interaction among the three components of the highway system. As a result, highway design practices have in large part failed to keep up with the evolution of vehicle design and behaviour of road users. Although many improvements have been introduced in the design guidelines of the different countries, including Canada, highway practitioners worldwide agree that more is still needed.