Prioritization of Black Spots in Hilly Road Segment using Road Engineering Data

Abstract

Road accidents are one of the causes of disability, injury and death. As per the latest road accident data released by the Ministry of Road Transport & Highways (MoRTH), the total number of accidents increased by 2.5 percent from 4,89,400 in 2014 to 5,01,423 in 2015. The analysis reveals that about 1,374 accidents and 400 deaths take place every day. Every single year, it has been estimated that over three lakh persons die and 10-15 million persons are injured in road accidents throughout the world. According to the analyses, statistics of global accident indicate that in developing countries, the rate of fatality per licensed vehicle is very high as compared to that of industrialized countries. A road stretch of about 500 metres in length in which either ten fatalities or five road accidents (involving grievous injuries/fatalities) took place during last three calendar years, on National Highways is considered as a road accident black spot according to MoRTH, Government of India. In the present study the identified black spots of Haridwar and Dehradun city were included comprising of a total of 81 black spots out of which there were 49 black spots which were identified in Dehradun followed by 32 black spots in Haridwar. The present study was an attempt to carry out the prioritization of these identified blackspots with respect to the factors that were considered to evaluate accident prone locations on the road. The identified black spots were then prioritized using the classification scheme (ranking from low to high).The study reveals that the advantage of using this approach for prioritizing accident black spots on roads is that it requires very less additional data other than the road network maps.