Development of road accident reporting mechanism for Sri Lanka

Abstract

The total population had risen from 14.8 million tol8.7 million between 1981 and 2001 (last census data), and the population growth is reducing and comparatively small about 1.2% per year. More than population increases; the increasing fleets have had a damaging effect on the number of road accident in Sri Lanka. The vehicle population has risen from 0.213 million in 1977 to 3.34 million in 2008. Over 1.06 million motor vehicles of all varieties were registered during the period between 1990 and 2001. Road accident has become one of the leading factors which have contributed for increasing the accident death rate in Sri Lanka. It seems that current safety policies are not sufficient to decrease the accidents in Sri Lanka. To develop better road safety policies, it is needed to identify the safety issues of the country.. A vision, a target plan, a programme of work and short term, medium and long term strategies should be set out in this policy. However, current accident reporting and analysis has not helped to identify the road safety issues of the country. This study was conducted to identify the deficiencies in the accident reporting and analysis and propose a suitable accident reporting and analyzing mechanism forSri Lanka. The study team reviewed the current accident reporting and analysis procedure and identified the useful data needed for reporting and analysis. Data will be collected under following categories in the revised accident data reporting form: (1) Accident Tracking Data, (2) Road Environment Data, (3) Driver/ Pedestrian involved Data, (4) Non- Motorized data, (5) Causalities and (6) Accident diagram. A Methodology has been proposed to obtain accident location. Road geometric and land use data has been included for road environment data. Vehicle involvement and Non- motorized involvement data has been included in the accident reporting form as sequential of events to better analysis the accident involvement. A new form has been Improved to include seating position, safety devised used and mode of transport of casualties. Developed accident reporting form can be used for recording and analyzing the accident data more efficiently.