Australian Road Assessment Program (AusRAP)
The Australian Road Assessment Program (AusRAP) is a program run by the Australian Automobile Association (AAA) and State and Territory motoring clubs including the RACQ, dedicated to saving lives through advocating for safer road infrastructure. AusRAP uses two methods of assessment:
- Risk mapping based on a road’s history of casualty crashes and traffic flow.
- Star rating maps based on levels of safety built into the road’s design, which can influence the likelihood of a crash occurring and its severity.
Like the successful European Road Assessment Program (EuroRAP), AusRAP represents a valuable tool to explain how roads can change from being safe to unsafe along their length. It also assists road authorities in identifying and prioritising road upgrades.
Risky mapping
The Collective, Individual and Combined Risk maps assess generally high speed sections of the highway network with speed limits of 90 km/h or higher (i.e., crashes are excluded through major townships with lower speeds) - although where there are small towns with lower speed limit located within a single section, these have typically been included.
Latest map
Risk mapping results
Collective risk shows the density, or total number, of casualty crashes over a given length of road. Collective risk is calculated by dividing the number of casualty crashes per annum by the length of highway.
Individual risk shows the casualty crash rates per vehicle kilometre travelled. This effectively represents the risk of being involved in a crash faced by an individual driver, by taking traffic volumes into account. Individual risk is calculated by dividing the frequency of crashes per annum by the distance travelled on each section of highway per annum.
Combined Risk
Both the collective risk and the individual risk reveal important aspects of the safety of a road section. These two risk types have been combined with equal weighting to produce a single risk score per road section (the combined risk score). Once a section of highway has received a combined risk score, it is assigned one of five corresponding colours from Low to High. The cut-off points between colours are determined by ranking sections from worst to least risk across the Queensland roads included in this assessment, calculating the total length of road assessed and then dividing this result into the five colour bandings, each representing as close as possible to 20 per cent of the network assessed. The ‘Combined Risk’ map layer provides clear targets for those roads requiring infrastructure upgrades: governments should focus on roads coloured in red and black as a priority, especially higher volume roads that also have an AusRAP 1 or 2-Star road infrastructure rating.
Star Rating for vehicle occupants (smoothed)
Star Ratings are based on the level of safety built into the road, i.e., how safe the road infrastructure is. Sections of road are rated on a scale of 1 to 5-stars, with 1-star being the least safe and 5-star being the safest. Safe roads with design elements such as dual-lane divided carriageways, good line marking and wide lanes have a higher star rating. Lower-rated roads are likely to have single-lanes and be undivided with poor line marking and hazards such as trees, poles and steep embankments close to the edge of the road.
The most recent AusRAP reports and maps can be viewed at the AusRAP website. Copies of previous reports are available below.
AusRap Report - How Safe Are Our Roads? Rating Queensland's Highway Network For Risk - National Highway Risk Mapping (2016)
Download PDF (7 MB)
AusRAP - Star Rating Australia’s National Network of Highways (2013)
Download PDF (9.3 MB)
AusRAP Star Rating 2013 – Peak Downs Highway
Updated 9 May 2013
Download PDF (1.6 MB)
AusRAP Report - How Safe Are Our Roads? Rating Australia's National Network for Risk - Benchmarking the performance of Australia's roads in the Decade of Action
Updated 1 June 2012
Download PDF (2.4 MB)
AusRAP Report - How Safe Are Our Roads? Rating Queensland's Highway Network for Risk - Benchmarking the performance of Queensland's roads in the Decade of Action
Updated 19 January 2012
Download PDF (1.2 MB)
How Safe Are Queensland's Roads? Rating Queensland Highways for Risk
Download PDF (1.4 MB)