When, where and why road accidents are likely on the Kings High NSW?
Keywords: Crashes - Analysis
ACRS
Submission Date: 2015 Conference: ARSC
Abstract
Rural road accidents are a major problem in regional Australia. The reasons for these accidents are a complex interplay between human behaviour, the road characteristics and environmental factors. This paper will consider the contribution that road geometry plays in the incidence of accidents involving injuries or fatalities. This relationship will be explored specifically for the Kings Highway, a major arterial road connecting the ACT with coastal southern New South Wales, Australia. It introduces a new method of plotting accidents with road segmentation calculating sinuosity, critical points, and road grade as three components of road geometry within a GIS context. The traffic flows are standardised relative to volume and the data is used to ascertain whether there is any correlation between the road geometry components and crash distributions between day and night driving. The results suggest that the likelihood of an accident is higher during the day on downhill curvy segments of the road. This is not the case for night driving where the incidence of an accident is similar on both straight and curved roads segments because of the headlight effect and limited background visual field.