Country: Cyprus
Name: Marios Philippou
Category: Article

Road Safety and Black Spots - A General Approach

Treating high risk infrastructure sites is essentially vital as this is an area of road safety work where sustainable and substantial casualty reductions can be achieved, in relatively short time and low cost. Only in the year 2007, 43,000 people died in road traffic accidents in the European Union. Some 1.7 million people were injured, many of them severely. The economic damages generated by traffic accidents were estimated at above €200 billion, corresponding to approximately 2% of the European Union’s Gross National Product. This numbers are extremely scary and worrisome at the same time and they should ring a bell to us. In addition, according to the EU Commission, road infrastructure and road design are a contributing factor in one out of three fatal accidents

After a thorough and intensive study of the researches, studies, and other information on the subject of road safety I found that all the researches indicate that the major failures in driver behavior are: 1) excessive speed 2) drink and 3) seatbelts. To add some, the researches also indicate that the main reasons of road accidents are: 1) speeding 2) careless driving 3) driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs 4) inexperienced drivers and finally 5) road infrastructure. Europe’s national safety strategies show that safer road design and layout would do the most in the direction of reducing the rate of serious injury and death, especially in countries where messages concerning safer vehicles and better driver behavior are generally understood and accepted. Unfortunately Europe-wide, present road design results from many decades of construction and maintenance sometimes even improper, in a time when safety issues where diluted among other considerations. So many roads today do not meet latest safety requirements. On top of that as we all know, traffic conditions have changed dramatically in the recent years. Additionally, new safety knowledge often takes too long to reach the authorities in charge of designing or maintaining the road network and to be applied. High risk sites or so called “black spots” are a major road safety factor that must be seriously taken into consideration. So the next step we should all take is to try to improve the building of awareness, knowledge and political leadership, in order to ensure that effective road infrastructure safety management will become common practice at all stages of decision-making, from road planning and design to operation and intervention. Procedures that can help assess the accident potential and safety performance of roads can and should be integrated in all phases of road planning, design, operation and inspection. For that purpose the EU Commission released a package of measures and guidelines geared at harmonizing safe road management practices such as road safety impact assessments, road safety audits and inspections that all European countries should swiftly adopt.
As we all know, road crashes are not evenly distributed throughout a road network. They occur in clusters at single sites, along particular sections of road, or scattered across whole residential neighborhoods. In most of the European countries according to the standards, as a black spot is defined a part or an exact location on the road network infrastructure where serious road injuries or casualties occurs for at least 2 times a year for a time period of the recent 3 years. Most of the black spots located in main urban areas are either junctions with traffic lights, either roundabout junctions or priority junctions without traffic lights. From the other high risk sides which can be found on the inter-urban network mostly are in residential urban areas, other are parts of highways and motorways and fewer are parts of the intercity road network. After knowing that, the engineers should focus on treating those high risk infrastructure sides in a relatively short time period and low cost, so they can contribute to the objective of reducing substantial and sustainable casualty. Firstly it is essential to understand that the way roads are designed and laid out, can reduce the probability and possibility that crash, injury or fatality occurs when road users are exposed, in addition with the reduction of the exposure to traffic of vulnerable road users and simultaneously that sufficient and efficient road design and laying can reduce the severity of the injury if it occurs. Also it is important to highlight that the direct accident reduction is not the only safety effect of road infrastructure safety management. The use of the proposed instruments and measures, which include the treatment of black spots, will create awareness for safety at all stages of decision-making on road planning and road design. Moreover with safer roads, deaths and injuries are preventable. Good roads and their proper design enforce desired traffic behavior by assisting the task of driving and offer an environment that is adapted more easily and efficiently to the limitations of human capacity.

After a detailed and thorough study of the way accidents are caused at the black spots, the researches have managed to isolate the main causes and contributing factors responsible for the car accidents on this high risk sites. These main reasons are: 1) careless driving 2) not keeping safe distance between cars 3) excessive speed 4) unmindful careless right turns 5) violation of traffic lights 6) not providing priority to vehicles and 7) driving under the influence of alcohol. It is essential to clarify that car accidents are frequently caused by a combination of the above reasons and not only by one the causes or factors mentioned before. The most common procedure followed on the researches was firstly to make a specific and detailed description of each one of the black spots, then on-side observation and afterwards a comity of officials and engineers went into further study and investigation of each problem individually and then they finally made suggestions and decisions of single actions or package of measures which are going to be applied on each site.

Besides that, anyone can understand that any road traffic system is highly complex and hazardous to human safety and health. Roads, motor vehicles, road users and their physical, social and economic environments are elements included in this system. Making a road traffic system less hazardous requires a “systems approach” – understanding the system as a whole and the interaction between its elements, and identifying where there is potential and need for intervention. In particular, it requires recognition that the human body is highly vulnerable to injury and that humans can and will make mistakes. A safe road traffic system is one that accommodates and compensates for human vulnerability and fallibility. The infrastructure should prevent collisions of moving objects with large differences in mass, direction and speed and moreover it should inform the road user what behavior is expected. A number of recurring design elements can be found on high risk sites. Looking for them helps identifying hazard. Identifying and solving high risk sites will lead to a substantial reduction in road deaths. A number of simple principles guide safe road design. In particular roads should be predictable (roads are constructed to make obvious what sort of behavior is expected from drivers), functional (roads are used by intended users and traffic volumes) and homogenous (differences in speed, mass and direction between vehicles are kept to a minimum). A number of design requirements help make roads functional, homogeneous and predictable so the will provide better safety levels for their users.

To sum up, identifying and solving high risk sites Europe-wide as I mentioned before will lead to a substantial reduction in road deaths, will improve the building of knowledge, awareness, and political leadership, in order to ensure that safety road management and effective infrastructure becomes common practice in the EU. I hope that some time soon, we can all help to create awareness amongst future road engineers and other road safety professionals and thereby contribute to get a life-long commitment to care about ‘’safe roads’’ from those actors who will shape and implement future road safety policies in the Southern, Eastern and Central European Countries.