STUDY OF ROAD ACCIDENTS IN INDIA

INTRODUCTION

Road accidents are one of the causes of disability, injury and death.

India has the highest road traffic accident rate worldwide with over 140000 deaths annually, beating even China. Every hour nearly 14 lives are lost due to road accidents.

Most accidents occur during peak hours considered an ‘unsafe’ or dangerous time due to complex flow pattern of vehicular traffic.

Thus traffic engineers have to undertake a big responsibility of providing safe traffic movements to the road users and ensure their safety.

Road accidents cannot be totally prevented but by suitable traffic engineering and management the accident rate can be reduced to a certain extend.

Studies on road accidents in India

COMMON CAUSES OF ROAD ACCIDENTS SPEEDING

CARELESS DRIVING

DRINKING DRIVING

SEAT BELT WEARING

INEXPERIENCE

LOSS OF CONTROL

FAILED TO LOOK PROPERLY

AT WORK

UNSAFE VEHICLE DESIGN.

LACK OF PROPER LAWS

PATHETIC CONDITION OF ROADS

• Defects in the quality of materials used.

• Defects in construction methods and quality control during construction.

• Does not follow the correct geometric standards.

• Inadequate surface or subsurface drainage in the locality resulting in the stagnation of water in the sub grade or in any of the pavement layers.

• Lack of proper maintenance.

• Increase in the magnitude of wheel loads and the number of load repetitions due to increase in traffic volume.

• Settlement of foundation of embankment of the fill material itself.

• Environmental factors including heavy rainfall, soil erosion, high water table, snow fall ,frost action ,etc..

STEPS TO BE TAKEN FOR PREVENTING ROAD ACCIDENTS…. Strict enforcement of speed limits.

One way traffic should be implemented.

Roads should be widened wherever required.

Curvatures should be minimized.

Footpaths and medians should be made mandatory for all important roads.

Zebra crossing should be provided.

Provide signals, road markings, sign posts..

Construction of humps in important places, accident prone areas ,etc.. And it must be mark properly to avoid accidents

Traffic rules should be strictly enforced.

PAVEMENT SAFETY FACTORS

SURFACE TEXTURE

PAVEMENT ROUGHNESS AND SURFACE DISTRESS

PAVEMENT SHOULDER DESIGN

RUMBLE STRIPS

PASSING LANES

TIME OF DAY AND WEATHER CONDITON

INCORPORATING ROAD SAFETY IMPROVEMENTS

Road surfaces must ensure an adequate level of friction at the tyre pavement interfaces to provide safe operation of vehicles.

Pavement surface properties

• Micro texture – tyre pavement contact, skid resistance

• Macro texture –drainage ability

SURFACE TEXTURE

PAVEMENT ROUGHNESS AND SURFACE DISTRESS “potholes, bumps or ruts”.

Driving on roads in good condition, higher accident may occur due to high speed, lower skid resistance and some other safety factors.

Single and multiple vehicle accident rates.

To decrease single vehicle road accidents by reducing the roughness of the roads, which increase the quality of driving.

Multiple road accidents on rougher roads contain two factors

Lateral variation in vehicle path

Road defects

PAVEMENT SHOULDER DESIGN

Shoulder performs variety of functions

o Lateral support

o Provides area

o Provide easy driving

o Safety zone for parking

o Improve sight distance

Shoulder reduces accident rates for various lane width categories such as

1-1.2m - 3m lanes

1.5m - 3.30m & 3.60m

Median shoulder width increases, accidents increases…

Main functions of traffic engineering studies is to improve safety by

• Minimizing shoulder drop-off

• Increase driver comfort

• Reduce property damage

RUMBLE STRIPS

Effective low cost method of providing guidance for drivers.

Mainly helpful at the time of winter storms, which reduces the visibility of pavement marking.

Installed wherever the shoulder width is 2m or more.

On shoulders adjacent to climbing lanes, rumble strips may be installed on 1.5m shoulder also.

PASSING LANES

Road system must have a wide paved lanes.

It helps in reducing problems during overtaking and to avoid queues of vehicles on the road.

It also provide adequate gap in the opposing traffic nor absence of solid barrier lines.

TIME OF DAY AND WEATHER CONDITION These are highly related to road

accident rates.

About 68% of accidents occur during daylight hours while 27% occur during the hours of darkness and the remaining 5% occur during low light conditions.

High accident areas can be targeted with innovative signing or reflectivity to ensure drivers are aware of their environment.

INCORPORATING ROAD SAFETY IMPROVEMENTS Pavement engineering properties

associated with road safety, there are various treatments available…

“skid resistance” can be restored by a list of specific treatments such as.. ‘surface milling, grooving, blasting, chip sealing, micro-surfacing, slurry seal, planning, bush hammering, etc..

Also based on pavement roughness, surface condition evaluation, pavement performance experience, surface visibility and paving materials, etc..

CLASSES OF FACTORS & INDICATORS

MAINTENANCE TREATMENT & ROAD SAFETY IMPROVEMENTS

ENGINEERING APPLICATIONS IN THE FIELD OF TRANSPORTATIONRoad safety is an integral part of

engineering design.

IRC formulates codes for road construction ,maintenance and also for road safety.

National highways used to be built through PWDs, which connects the entire states of nation.

NHAI

Policy is to provide bypass, service lanes….

MAJOR CHALLENGES PRETAINING TO ENGINEERING MEASURES..

Accessibility rather than mobility

Economic growth and development

Deficiency of funds for non-NHDP networks

Available funds for maintenance & repair is only about 35%-40% of the estimated fund

PRESENT POLICIES REGARDING ENGINEERING MEASURES FOR ROAD SAFETY• Short term solutions

Inadequate provision of SSD, signage, shoulder width, delineators, pedestrian railing, crash barriers, edge and lane marking…..

• Medium term solutions

Improvement of junctions, culvert parapet, lack of visibility at night, safety measures for pedestrians, rest areas, shoulder consolidation…..

• Long term solutions

Construction of service road, grade separator intersections, under passes, flyovers, climbing lane at steep gradient….

GEOMETRIC DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS OF ROADS TO PREVENT ACCIDENTSBasic objectives of geometric design are

Optimize efficiency

Safety

Minimizing cost

Minimizing environmental damages

Livability

Geometric design can be broken into 3 parts

Alignment

Profile

Cross section

ALIGNMENT- route of the road, defined as a series of horizontal tangents and curves

PROFILE – vertical aspect of the road, including crest, sag curves and the straight grade lines connecting them.

CROSS SECTION – position, no of vehicles, bicycle lanes and side walks ,along with their cross slope or banking, drainage features, pavement structure and other items outside the category of geometric design.

DESIGN STANDARDS

Design guidelines taken into account by

Speed

Vehicle type

Road grade (slope)

View obstructions

Stopping distance

AASHTO published primary US guidance on “A Policy on Geometric Design of Highway and Streets” and other standards includes Australian Guide to design and British Design Manual for Roads

PROFILE

Consist of road slopes(grades) connected by parabolic vertical curves

Sag curves –tangent slopes at the end of the curve that is higher than the beginning of the curve

Crest vertical curves –tangent slope at the end of the curve lower than the beginning of the curve

Drainage – poor in sag curves and flat roads

SAG CURVES

Concave upwards

Head light sight distance (S)–important design criteria

S is determined by angle of head light & angle of tangent slopes at the end of the curve

Headlights are 2 ft above the ground and the headlight beam diverges 1° above the longitudinal axis of the vehicle.

CREST CURVES

Convex upwards

Stopping sight distance is the important design criteria, it is determined by the speed of traffic

Sight Distance > Curve Length (S>L)

Sight Distance < Curve Length (S<L)

US standards specify that, the height of driver’s eye is up to 1080mm from the pavement and height of object the driver needs to see as 600mm

Cyclist’s eye height is at 4.5 ft from the pavement

GEOMETRY

CROSS SLOPE

Includes horizontal or lateral slopes

Leveled road creates problem of drainage

In tangent sections,1 – 2% C S is provided

“NORMAL CROWN” is provided

“SUPER ELEVATION” for curved sections

Lower cross slope increases, risk of loss of control increases

8% super elevation is provided for sharp curves

Radius of curve is given by

SAFETY EFFECTS OF CROSS SECTION

Cross slopes and lane width affects the safety performance of a road

‘lane departure crashes’ are mostly on narrow lane roads

SIGHT DISTANCE

Length of road way ahead visible to the driver

It is the distance travelled during two phases

Perception reaction time

Maneuver time (Brake reaction time)

• Depending upon the situations,3 types of sight distance are used

Stopping sight distance

Decision sight distance

Intersection sight distance

Stopping sight distance- distance travelled during PRT & MT and affected by road conditions, mass of the vehicle, inclination of the road and some other factors

Decision sight distance- used when drivers must make decisions more complex than stop or don’t stop, roads are designed for DSD ,using 6 to 10sec for PRT & 4 to 5sec for MT

Intersection sight distance – distance needed to safely proceed through an intersection ,it depends upon traffic control at the intersection and the maneuver

CONCLUSION

Safety means first aid to the uninjured

Health of the nation is more important than the wealth of the nation

Road safety is a major public health concern

Strict implementation of road safety measures reduces the“ ROAD ACCIDENTS”

REFERENCES

Journal Articles:

DR. (Mrs.) Nishi Mittal & DR. S.M.Sarin,“ characteristics of road accidents in India”, Indian Highways,October 2001

A. Anne Rosaline, B. Sathya Narayanan & S. Shanmuga Sundara Boopathy,“comparison of accident rate using accident ranking”, Indian Highways, September 2012

Dinesh Mohan, “Road accidents in India”, IATSS Research vol.33 No.1,2009

Websites:

Ministry of Road Transport and Highways Transport Research Wing, Government of India, 2009. “Road accidents in India 2009”, http://morth.nic.in/writereaddata/.../RoadAccidents2009750843813.pdf (Viewed on 26 September 2011).

Milan Batista,”On the Mutual Coefficient of Restitution in Two Car CollinearCollisions”,http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0601/0601168.pdf (Viewed on 26 September2011).

Prof.TomV.Mathew2012,<http://www.civil.iitb.ac.in/tvm/1111_nptel/582_Accident/plain/plain.html>

Thank you