Guideline for road safety improvement at identified accident blackspots

Abstract

This thesis provides a procedure for road safety improvement at identified accident black spots. Accident rates in Sri Lanka are very high considering the population and the number of vehicles on the road. Simple safety measures will lead to a significant reduction of accidents at identified accident black spots. Black spots treatments are likely to be the most effective and straight forward. Having identified an accident black spot along a route, it is needed to identify nature of the problems leading to poor safety.// Moreover, there is no guideline at present to identify the reasons for the problems in identified accident locations. The process developed here is further analysis than a safety audit because in a safety audit, it is expected to treat all identified problems. In this research it has been identified five major issues and their sub issues which caused to accidents in Sri Lankan road network. The five issues are Road markings, Signing and lightening, Layout geometric details and road surface, Pedestrians, Overtaking and Land use.// The five safety issues were finalized after following number of check lists which are used in safety audits to enhance road safety. Moreover road expatriate experience in Sri Lankan Road Agencies were in cooperated to expand and develop in a local context when concluding the main issues. Method has been proposed to priotrize the major issue, as most of our organizations are not in a position to rectify all identified issues due to restricted funds. When priotrizing the major issue a sensitivity analysis was done to get the suitable weightings in decision making criteria depending on location. Then it could be implemented the most relevant safety measures for that particular location with reference to the given safety measures in this document. An important conclusion of this study is that implementing the given method it will enhance the road safety in identified accident black spots with low cost but still very effective safety measures. Moreover resulting more economic benefits to the society.