O'Brien, Eugene J.Eugene J.O'BrienHajializadeh, DonyaDonyaHajializadehSheils, EmmaEmmaSheilsEnright, BernardBernardEnright2013-02-202013-06-012012, Tayl2012-07-089780415621243http://hdl.handle.net/10197/4119The Sixth International IABMAS Conference on Bridge Maintenance, Safety, Management, Resilience & Sustainability, Stresa, Lake Maggiore, Italy, 8-12 July 2012This paper considers the problem of assessing traffic loading on road bridges. A database of European WIM data is used to determine accurate annual maximum distributions of load effect. These in turn are used to find the probability of failure for a number of load effects. Using the probability of failure as the benchmark, traditional measures of safety – factor of safety and reliability index – are reviewed. Both are found to give inconsistent results, i.e., a given factor of safety or reliability index actually corresponds to a range of different probabilities of failureenTraffic loadsBridge loadsConference Publication2012-08-15https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/1.0/