Predicting Road Accidents and Prioritizing Road Safety Improvement Measures in Developing Countries Using Adapted Traffic Conflict Techniques

Road accidents in developing countries are increasing at an alarming rate. Deaths due to road accidents are becoming the single biggest killer in developing countries. Although there is a pressing need for improving road safety, it has been observed that improvement measures are not taken up systematically. Unless all stakeholders are involved and a system wide road safety approach is considered, local improvements will not reduce the total number of accidents. Thus, there is an urgent need to identify and undertake prioritized road safety improvement actions across the roadway system. In countries like India, where road accidents are not recorded accurately, data on causes of various types of accidents is not readily available hindering policy making in planning and implementing road safety improvement measures. In this research, a mathematical model for predicting road accidents and prioritizing road safety improvement measures is introduced for Indian road conditions. An adapted version of the Traffic Conflict Techniques is used to assess the main causes of accidents on Indian roads. Analysis and results of the conflict data are used to develop a mathematical model to identify and prioritize road safety measures. Recommendations made in this study can be used by agencies with limited resources to employ proposed low cost techniques suggested in this research to identify high priority road safety issues and prioritize their respective road safety improvement initiatives.