Determination of definition for accident black spots in Sri Lanka

The road traffic environment in Sri Lanka is getting more and more complex due to the increasing rate of vehicle volume and the number of pedestrians. The road infrastructure is not developed at the same rate; therefore the number of accidents that annually occur in Sri Lanka is relatively high compared to other countries. In Sri Lanka there are about 48,000 to 50,000 accidents occurring annually which results 1,500 - 2,000 fatalities and about 15,000 injuries. There is a gradual increase of vehicle population for the past decade in urban areas and it is about 11 percent per year. This makes a big impact to the road accidents in Sri Lanka. The cost of road traffic accidents is the most relevant measure to quantify the magnitude of the problem. In Sri Lanka, total accident cost for years 1998,1999 and 2000 are Rs. 7,017 million, Rs. 8,134 million and Rs. 9,293 million respectively. It is about 1 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP)2. Therefore there is a great need for reducing the number of accidents in Sri Lanka to enhance the development of the country. The accident black spots, which have been identified by “National Road Safety Secretariat”, are based on the number of accidents and the accident frequency. This research was focused on a detailed analysis of accidents black spots which enabled to drive some useful relationships such as accident rates, bicycle, pedestrian accidents with the bicycle and pedestrian flow at the black spots

Determination and suitable remedial treatment methods of accident prone locations (blackspots) in the city of Colombo (Sri Lanka)

The phenomenon of accident black spots has been recognised for many years. There is also considerable evidence to support the contention that the identification and remedial treatment of such sites proves extremely cost effective in accident reduction terms. David Silcock (1984) reported that in a County Council in U.K. an average first year Economic Rate of Return (ERR) of 148 percent was obtained for 147 black spots treated in the area. Nevertheless, the black spots approach to accident reduction represents only one of a number of low - cost engineering strategies in the road safety field. In this method, the locations where heaviest concentration of accidents occur are identified as those which require urgent attention, and remedial measures are carried out with economic justification

Prioritising the Road Safety Programme

All over the world, a large number of road accidents are occurring every year causing loss of life, injuries and loss of property. In a research study done in Sri Lanka, these losses had been quantified and it was shown that the total cost of traffic accidents in Sri Lanka is about 1% of the GDP of the country. Therefore, there is an urgent need to have a properly designed road safety programme to bring down the accident costs and save the lives. As the budget available for the road safety would be limited, especially in developing countries, it is vital to priorities the road safety improvements. There are two such mechanisms identified in this research termed as Equivalent Accident Number (EAN) and the Weighted Accident Number (WAN). It is shown that the EAN is a better mechanism to rank an accident blackspots and the WAN, which is based on the collision type analysis, could be used to plan the road safety programme properly

Speed reduction as a road safety measure

The growing number of road accidents is a major national problem in Sri Lanka. By analyzing the police database of past accident records, the causes for the road accidents have been identified as a prominent cause for road traffic accidents. According to the past accident records from the year 1992 to 1999, there were about 17507 fatal accidents, and 29526 grievous accidents occurred out of the total of 613785 accidents over the last eight years. The annual loss due to road traffic accidents has been evaluated as Rs. 12.9 billion in year 1999. The research was focused on high speeds at intersections since a higher percentage of accidents occurred close to or at intersections. A feasibility study has been conducted for a speed reduction measure which uses transverse bar markings. The results before the study and after the study indicated that there is a marginal drop in the speeds due to the presence of transverse strips. Thus, the use of a combination of transverse strips and other measures is suggested at intersections