Perhaps design rules are only developed from research and design standards written in the developer's own language; or perhaps a country's standards are developed from those of a geographically nearby and important country, or from what used to be a politically important country. The basic thought behind my question is that maybe a country's design standards are not necessarily based on best practice?
Very interesting question Robert. From the short clarification of the question, I think this line of research is directly related to 'Standards of Practice' in developing Countries which, most times, follows the standards of the Countries that colonized them. Is it possible to rephrase the word 'DETERMINE' to 'INFLUENCE' in your question? I'll be waiting.
Hallo Christy, yes perhaps "determine" was a bit attention-grabbing. You are also right in referring to standards in developing countries possibly following those of the countries which colonised them. And language is a barrier as well (how many English engineers can read German standards in highway design, in the original language?).
It could be possible to identify some key countries and map the countries whose standards follow theirs. For example (partly guessing here)
India (Bhutan, Nepal)
Germany (Hungary)
UK (Malta)
USA (Afghanistan, Iraq)
This would certainly help in any study of comparative highway geometrics.
There also appears to be a trend for the development of multi-country standards (UNECE Europe, Asian Highway Network etc.) but these could as much be downgrading towards compromise solutions rather than working up to best practice solutions, and they may well be ignored in practice.
There are three (3) important variables you intend to examine . Each of the variables is vast and could be viewed as collection of sub-variables. I have some suggestions. The 'historical' variable is the most pronounced in African countries. The width of roads were definitely influenced by Trade routes (footpaths) for Explorers and Natives from the Interior. As the volume of trade increased, railways were constructed while these routes expanded to act as feeders to the railway system.( See Obot J. U. 2005). With increasing civilization, these initial routes presently are mostly the important highways and super - highways in these countries with the emerging ones never achieving same prominence. More later.
Thanks for your notes Christy (and looking forward to your next ones). To refer to my idea of key countries, the Netherlands would be a key country. One interesting feature is that its highway research organisations (SWOV Institute for road safety) and to some extent CROW publish documents in English - making them accessible to an international audience. Another barrier which might be relevant is cost. For example the Australian road design guides documents cost around Euros 850.
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