An odd looking van with four video cameras attached to the roof will be driving along Tauranga roads for the next three days.

The paranoid need not worry, it's not a case of mass surveillance, but part of a state-of-the-art road safety initiative dubbed KiwiRAP Urban.

Road safety engineers Gina Waibl, Rui Wang and Mi Xiaoyi will be data collecting to measure the safety of our roads.

It falls under the larger KiwiRAP road assessment programme measuring the safety of New Zealand's state highways since 2008.

Tauranga is one of four pilot cities, along with Auckland, Christchurch and Dunedin, the urban initiative has been introduced to.

Tauranga City Council traffic engineer Martin Huang says KiwiRAP Urban will give the city a much clearer picture of where road safety risks are highest.

'Safety measures can be targeted where they are needed most. This is another step towards having safer roads and, ultimately, fewer people hurt from crashes.

'It's quite a pioneering project and one of the first in the world so it's good that Tauranga can be part of it.”

Martin says the initiative will have a huge impact on the community as it provides council with data they can utilise in the future to provide better and safer roads in the community.

To record the necessary data the van has been fitted out with four HD cameras, GPS and distance measuring instruments.

On good weather days a team of four road safety engineers will video a journey of about 100km in order to compile data that will then be analysed to give roads a rating from 1 to 5 stars.

The ratings measure attributes like roads' lane width, shoulder sizes, driver visibility, and any roadside hazards, such as power poles, ditches or trees.

Ratings will also be produced for a road's safety for people walking, on bikes and on motorcycles.

The first KiwiRAP Urban crash risk maps for these areas are due for release in November.

NZTA director of safety Ernst Zollner says KiwiRAP Urban is a ground-breaking development that will help local authorities make their roads safer.

'The Government's Safer Journeys strategy has set us a clear vision of creating a road system increasingly free of serious injuries and deaths by 2020.

'Improving the safety of roads and roadsides is a key focus for Safer Journeys, and KiwiRAP is helping us make it a reality.”

Ernst says the KiwiRAP highway assessment programme identified a number of roads that were New Zealand's highest risk routes in its first report in 2008.

Authorities then used this information to target measures that saw a 30 per cent reduction in fatal and serious crashes on these high risk highways over the next five years.