The place of road technical specifications in the control system

There are two main types of documents of technical specifications fulfilling different functions, the legal measures and the standards. In the legal measures, primarily, the general principles important for the public, the basic requirements and the proceedings of proof and assignment can be found. The standards usually include concrete and detailed rules for the technical implementation. The most important among standards are the national ones, but besides there are other, standard-affinitive types of documents of lower level. The standards and the standard-affinitive documents are also called technical specifications.

Between the two types of documents several important differences can be made. One of the most important is that the application of legal measures is obligatory while the standards are applied voluntarily. Owing to the voluntariness of standards if a producer wants to adapt more recent solutions coming from the technical improvement as those included in the given standard there is no prohibitive regulation. However, the new, non-standard technical solutions cannot result in a step back in the fulfilment of a given requirement.

The legal measures cannot exclusively refer to any standard but the latter can be hold up as an example. The solution offered by standards is an accredited and possible way for the fulfilment of legal requirements but other solutions can also be accepted. However, the solutions different from the standard have to ensure at least that niveau which the instanced standard would have resulted in. The standards can also be referred to in contracts, standards and judicial proceedings.

Among the technical specifications lower than the national standard the technical standard-publications are the most important. The circle of constructors is narrower than in the case of the national standard. The construction organizations are in general firms, societies or associations of individuals with a defineable specialty. The finished technical specifications are usually called technical directives, technical prescriptions etc. Similarly to the national standards they can also be referred to.

Documents of lower level than the national standard are primarily needed if a given area is not regulated by any national standard and the development of a national standard cannot be expected either. Another reason can be that the existing standard doesn't cover every detail, it only includes some frame directions. The lower document cannot contradict the higher one. Thus the technical standard-publications cannot conflict with the national standards, furthermore, the national standards cannot conflict with the legal measures.

The special elements of the road technical specifications are partly legal measures, partly technical specifications.

The road technical regulation appearing as an annex to the departmental order is a measure lower than an act or an executive decree which is obligatory for both the public and the local roads and the private roads open to the public traffic as well.

The road technical specification is a technical specification of lower level than the national standard, it is a technical standardizing publication. The document is worked out together with a professional team, the Hungarian Road Association gathering experts interested in the road branch. Although the road technical specification is basicly a documentum applicable on a voluntary basis, the public road services are obliged to obey it both as a borrower and in their own operation. The reason why it is obligatorily applicable is that the ministry accountable for the maintenance of public roads makes is by a contract reference obligatory. However, the operator of local roads owned by the local authority and of private roads open to the public traffic are not obliged to follow the road technical specification, it serves as a recommendation to them. It is so because the inspectoral power of the ministry as the operator of public roads and highways doesn't cover these two road categories and thus it doesn't have the power to make it obligatory by contract.