Road Safety System Analysis

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ABSTRACT

India’s highways are increasingly becoming killing fields. The country has one of the highest rates of road accidents in the world with about 500,000 accidents a year. Some 130,000 people lose their lives each year, and another 500,000 or so are injured. In fact, more lives are lost in road accidents in India than in epidemics, natural calamities or wars put together. Within India, Tamil Nadu has recorded one of the fastest increases in the number of vehicles on the roads and the maximum number of fatalities in the country. About 150 accidents take place per day on average, claiming around two lives every hour. Considering the latest statistics, total deaths in Tamil Nadu on the road for the year 2013-2014 were nearly 15,400. Of this number, 3972 were pedestrian deaths, 4492 were passenger deaths and the remaining were driver deaths.

Deaths in Tamil Nadu (2013-2014)

45%

26%

29%

Pedestrian Passengers Drivers

Figure 1: Percentage distribution of deaths

In 1999, about 750000 people were killed globally in road accidents. Of this, a staggering

640,000, which is roughly 85% were from emerging nations. In fact, by 2020 Road traffic accidents will become the 3rd ranked cause in terms of years lost (by death or disability). (Baguley, 2001) This pushes more pressure on governments around the world to invest more in road safety.

Also, starting from 1980, the number of road fatalities has increase to 65% till 1995 in Asia, whereas it has dipped by roughly 20% in the same time period for Developed countries. Though the traffic in these countries has not risen dramatically, but the number of vehicles on the road have been increasing year on year. The reason for the dip in fatalities can be attributed to the efforts put by the government in road safety.

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INTRODUCTION

Road accidents is a commonly accepted as “ a rare, random, multi factor event which is always preceded by a situation in which one more road users have failed to cope with the environment”. First, we make an attempt to interpret this definition piece by piece.

Accidents are rare events in terms of the passage of time, and the composition and flow of traffic on the road network. However, cumulatively, these rare events