Accident Studies and Road Safety Audit for Urban Road Network of Patiala City

Abstract

Road Safety Audit is the official and one of the best methods to examine the safety performance and accident potential of newly made as well as of present roads. It is an effective and very productive method and efficient method used to improve the road infrastructure. It is already proven that it has the ability to reduce the accidents and thus can save life of many people’s around the world. From planning to development phase, construction stage, operation and maintenance stage it can be implemented to every stage of the project. During the design period its proper implementation, maintenance, operation and design is very crucial in project highways from safety point of view of road user with the roads. Thus, safer roads which ultimately leads to safer life. In this thesis, crash information for the year 2013 to 2016 of Patiala has been gathered, investigated and marked .Analysis of accidents on the basis of nature, sex, and collision spot has been done. Crash matrix of impacting vehicle with victim vehicle has been prepared by analyzing the type of vehicles involves in the accident. The point with maximum number of accidents taking place has been called as black spots as their value of accident severity index is maximum in these spots. These spotted points are of real concern as here the accidents are frequently taking place. After analysis it is concluded Dukh Nivaran chowk, Bus stand chowk, Rajpura road and lakkadmandi intersection, Rajpura Road and New Bypass Intersection and fountain chowk are the five locations which are marked as black spots. These spots are visually inspected and various deficiencies have been noted and their recommendations have also been suggested. Safety Audit and speed analysis has also been performed on 92 spots including all the black spots and other section which is considered as major accidental road stretches comprising nearly 15 % of major road network of Patiala. Their scores concluded that all the roads of Patiala belong to the poor category as per code of “Urban Road Safety Audit” 2013 by Ministry of Urban Development. Mostly footpath is absent on every roads including arterial roads. Provision for cycle accessibility and lighting is absent on every roads of Patiala.