Highway Safety

CE 303 Transportation
Engineering
Department of Civil
Engineering
University of Peradeniya
By
Dr G S Gurusinghe
th

Highway Safety, Accident

Studies and Analysis
An important aspect of transportation
Engineering
The three approaches are
Reducing accident occurrence
Reducing severity of accidents
Improving accident survivability (Vehicle
design, emergency services, ambulance,
medical facilities)
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Accident Data Collection and

Reporting
Location
Frequency
Severity
Type
Involved people, vehicles, property ,
etc.
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Accident Statistics
Quantify and describe three types of
information
Accident occurrence
Accident involvement
Accident severity
Total number of accident involvements,
injuries and deaths could be misleading. It
does not reflect the basis for accidents.
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Example : An increase of 10% of

any of the totals may sound like a
serious problem. But, if this increase
is due to travel increased by 25%,
10% increase in the totals does not
sound that serious. Therefore
accident rates are commonly used in
accident analysis.
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Accident Rates
POPULATION BASED accident rates
Area population
Number of registered vehicles
Number of licensed drivers
Highway kilometres

EXPOSURE BASED accident rates

Vehicle kilometres travelled (VKMT)
Vehicle hours travelled (VHT)
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Examples of Accident Rates

Accidents per 100 000 population
Fatalities per 1 000 000
population
Injuries per 10 000 registered
vehicles
Accidents per million VKMT.
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Accounting for Severity

Equivalent property damage only
(EPDO)
EPDO = k1 x No of fatal accidents +
k2 x No of injury accidents + No of
property damage only (PDO)
k1 and k2 are constants to be
calibrated.
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Statistical Analysis of High

Accident Locations
x1 = Accident rate at the location
under consideration
= Average accident rate for
similar locations
s = Standard deviation of accident
rates
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k = A statistical parameter based

on level of confidence (LOC)

If the inequality
is
satisfied it is a high accident location
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Before and After Studies

fA = No of accidents after the improvement
fB = No of accidents before the improvement
z1 = Test statistic representing reduction of
accidents on standard normal distribution.
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If p (z z1) 0.95 reduction of

accidents is significant at 95%
level of confidence.

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