RISK ANALYSIS OF FOUR LANE DIVIDED HIGHWAY BASED ON ROAD SAFETY AUDIT

Abstract

With expansion of road network which exceeded over 5.4 lakh kilometers and increase in number of motor vehicles that has crossed the mark of 2.1 lakh thousand in 2015 along with swelling urbanization, road accidents are the negative externality that emerge as complementary. But the fact that number of accidents and injuries have dropped and on the contrary the fatalities and severity of accident have inflated by 4.7% in 2016 with respect to previous year, the severity is the factor that has been rising at an alarming rate. Thus, the study focuses on determining risk index for rural highway which is a quantified value based on various factors such as exposure, accident severity, accident probability, etc. as per various researchers. This risk index is not derived from accident data but is based upon Road Safety Audit and other factors as discussed further. As per IRC SP 88 2010 Manual for Road Safety Audit, it says that Road Safety Audit is a technique to determine accident potential and safety performance of road and it is to lower the likelihood of crashes and if occurred it ensures that they are less severe and this enhances the significance of Road Safety Audit in the present study. The study was carried out only on National Highways with reliable accident data as they are major contributors to road accidents i.e. one third of total accidents occur on national highways which constitute only 2% of road network in India. The factors such geometric design and road infrastructure are considered in the study while doing risk analysis and are used as determinants for safety index calculation and further the validation is based upon the model developed utilizing the historically available authentic accident data, segments of highway, traffic data, etc.s The study results show good correlation between ranking of the road segments as per risk index and based upon available road accident data. This validated technique can be used to determine risk on the road without relying on the degenerated and unreliable accident data and safety measures can be incorporated on the road segments as per priority which is determined based upon the risk index of the Highway segments.