Road traffic accident analysis and identification of black spot locations on highway

Abstract

Road safety is the main problem in developing countries. Every year, millions of people die in road traffic accidents, resulting in huge losses of humankind and the economy. This study focuses on the road traffic accident analysis and identification of black spots on the Lahore-Islamabad Highway M-2. Official data of road traffic accidents were collected from National Highway and Highway Police (NH & MP) Pakistan. The data was digitized on MS Excel and Origin Pro. The accident Point weightage (APW) method was employed to identify the black spots and rank of the top ten black spots. The analysis shows that the trend of road traffic accidents on M-2 was characterized by a high rate of fatal accidents of 35.3%. Human errors account for 66.8% as the major contributing factors in road traffic accidents, while vehicle errors (25.6%) and environmental factors (7.6%) were secondary and tertiary contributing factors. The main causes of road traffic accidents were the dozing on the wheel (27.9%), the careless driving (24.6%), tyre burst (11.7%), and the brakes failure (7.4%). Kallar Kahar (Salt Range) was identified as a black spot (223 km, 224 km, 225 km, 229 km, and 234 km) due to vehicle brake failure. The human error was a major contributory factor in road traffic accidents, therefore public awareness campaign on road safety is inevitable and use of the dozen alarm to overcome dozing on the wheel.