The departmental set of rules of the Committee of Highways will be non-regulatory for the time being For the first time in Kazakhstan, a document that mandates the assessment of road safety even before its construction/reconstruction has been approved.
The departmental set of rules “ Road safety procedures on highways” was developed by KazdorNII and approved by the Committee of Highways, will come into effect in early 2025.
The document solidifies the concepts of “detailed accident analysis” and “road safety inspection”, which provides a legal basis for systematic improvement of the road accident rate. These rules are based on international standards and will be implemented in pilot regime, with the prospect of introducing a mandatory departmental regulation for furtherance.
"There are no concepts of road safety audit and inspection in Kazakhstani legislation. Consequently, there is no structure in the country that would be responsible for these issues in a coordinated manner. The work required is not being done. At present we want to introduce such a system. This year, following the order of the Committee of Highways of the Ministry of Transport of the Republic of Kazakhstan approved a document that regulates the analysis of accidents and road safety by certified and accredited specialists,"says Andrei Chzhen, director of the standardization department of KazdorNII.
According to the specialist, a road safety audit is done during the design stage in developed countries. This helps to eliminate errors at early stages and avoid high mortality and injury rates in road accidents. And in already built road sections there are inspections, based on the results of which auditors give recommendations to eliminate dangerous situations.
In the next phase, Kazakhstani specialists plan to study the best practices of leading countries (such as the United States, Sweden and Japan) and develop a draft concept of road safety, which will distribute the responsibilities between government agencies and relevant organizations. In November 2024, KazdorNII specialists have already familiarized themselves with the methods of the Czech Transport Research Center CDV, which specializes in auditing and inspection of road safety.
“The subject is super relevant for Kazakhstan considering that for the year 2024 more than 2700 road accidents were recorded, in which more than 2 thousand people were killed and more than 30 thousand people were injured”, says the representative of the Institute.
According to international organizations, Kazakhstan has a terrible situation. It has even caused serious concern to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which is involved in the creation of the TRACECA transport corridor. The EBRD engaged iRAP experts to develop an action plan to improve the level of safety on Kazakhstani roads, as the country is one of the most unsafe in the project. Meanwhile, the measures taken by the Committee of Highways have already aroused interest from road engineers, builders and owners of roads. The first road safety audits and monitoring of road accidents are scheduled for 2025.
”The adoption of the rules has been well received by colleagues. Although the implementation of them is still are non-regulatory, just this week there were requests for an independent expert assessment of road safety, road safety inspection and detailed analysis of road accidents. This shows that the industry is well aware of the scale and urgency of the issue," added Andrei Zhen.
For reference
From 1991 to 2021, almost 460 thousand road accidents were registered in the country, as a result of which about 88 thousand people were tragically killed and more than 550 thousand people were injured.
2023: 10.5 thousand traffic accidents, 2.2 thousand dead, 16 thousand injured.
I half of 2024: 10.2 thousand traffic accidents (88.3% increase to the first half of 2022). 981 dead, including 126 children (+ 7.1%). 12.8 thousand injured (+ 88.7%).