In the light of the recent catastrophic fires intunnels much effort has been put into the work of preventing fires in tunnelsand limiting the consequences of fires when occurring. This study describes thelevel of fire safety of road tunnels at the tunnel design stage, as given inguidelines, standards, regulations, directives, etc. A number of road tunnelguidelines from different countries and organizations have been compared to eachother. The main focus of the comparison is the application criteria ofguidelines and installation spacing. The comparison provides several interestingdiscussion topics, including similarities or differences between detailed requirementsand the popularity type of each fire safety equipment or facility. The work canbe divided into three parts. First, how tunnels are categorized in thedifferent guidelines is described. Secondly, a description and comparison ofdifferent safety measures and how these relate to different tunnel categoriesis given. In the paper, the requirements for hand held extinguishers and the resistanceto fire for different equipment are given as examples. Finally, the work includessome recommendations for specific improvement to Korean guidelines.