Comprehensive Analysis of Road Accidents and Surrogate Measures to Enhance Road Safety

Worldwide, more than 50 million casualties occur in road crashes each year, in which 80% of road crashes are in developing countries. The country ranks one in the number of road accident deaths and an increase of about 47% in road crashes is expected in the next 20 years. Kerala is one of the top five accident-prone states in the country at the present time. Road safety becomes more and more important every year as the annual growth rate of traffic is more than 10% in Kerala. Road crashes tend to result in personal injury, loss of life, or damage to property. The challenging factors in the traffic conditions existing in our road networks are the mixed traffic conditions and vulnerable road users. The state needs a comprehensive road safety plan, which in turn requires enormous data with respect to the accident and its severity over a period of time in order to reduce the accident scenario. Contributing factors of road accidents need to be documented in order to decide the most appropriate solutions. The objective of this study is to analyze the accident data over a period of time, identify the causative factors, and suggest appropriate solutions. A 60 km stretch of National Highway NH 66 passing through the Kollam district of the state was selected for this purpose. Data from the State Crime Records Bureau (SCRB), over a period of three years from 2017 to 2019 was collected and analyzed. Year-wise accident statistics, trends and causative factors were identified. Certain locations were identified to be blackspots as per MoRTH standards were later taken up for detailed study and appropriate solutions were suggested.