Death and injuries as a result of road accidents is a recognized global
problem, especially in developing countries were resources are scarce and
there is little knowledge regarding traffic safety. Traffic safety issues in
developing countries should be addressed in a way so that local resources
are used to describe and understand the processes behind the traffic safety
problems. This facilitates the planning of effective countermeasures or
traffic safety strategies.
The main purpose of this study was to introduce a simple and efficient
methodology to perform traffic safety studies when there are few resources
available to work with. The methodology has three steps: data collection,
analysis and result. The data collection has the following stages: site
survey, speed measurements, traffic counts and traffic conflict studies.
Data is gathered using observers and simplified routines. The Swedish
traffic conflict technique is used as an assessing tool to study traffic
safety. The expected results are: a detailed description of the traffic
safety, identification of traffic safety problems and proposal of
countermeasures to alleviate the problems.
Field studies were performed in the city of São Carlos, SP, Brazil in
cooperation with the University of São Paulo and the Municipality of São
Carlos. Three study locations where chosen on basis of their accessibility
and size. In the study locations traffic safety problems were identified and
countermeasures proposed. In one of the intersections (Roundabout UPS) the
countermeasure was implemented and evaluated.
Results show that the geometrical layout of the intersection,
signalization and speed has a clear influence over the amount and severity
of the conflicts. The implementation of the countermeasure (speed bumps)
reduced the speeds, amount and severity of conflicts, having therefore a
positive effect in improving traffic safety. The effectiveness of the
countermeasure shows that the right hypotheses were used to address the
problem.
The study indicates that the proposed methodology and the Swedish traffic
conflict technique can be used to perform traffic safety studies even when
there are few resources available. However, scarce resources might affect
the training of the observers and somehow reliability of the observations.
Some problems were detected when using the traffic conflict technique to
evaluate conflicts involving pedestrians as main road users. Detection of
the conflict, proper evaluation and estimation of the severity of the
conflict in the analysis affect the quality of the results.
The presented methodology and the Swedish traffic conflict technique have
a great potential as traffic safety assessment tool in developing countries.
One of the advantage...
