Abstract
Traffic accidents have serious public health and economic concern all over the world especially in developing countries. Oman had registered as the highest road accident death rate in the GCC and third highest in the Eastern Mediterranean region. The analysis of accident characteristics is one of the most significant aspects that engineers rely on during the design of road networks and/or the safety performance evaluation of roadway systems. The main objective of this paper is to perform several statistical analyses for traffic accidents characteristic at the road network in Dhofar, Sultanate of Oman. Such analyses will help to explore the scale and main characteristics of traffic accidents for specific network system or location as well as identifying the hazardous locations and the most important variables that may be considered in building Accident Prediction Models (APMs). In this study a new methodology for recording and analyzing accidents data was established. Different types of accident and accidents' causes were defined and analyzed in this study. Total of 5825 accidents was collected from Royal Oman Police (ROP) during 2007 to 2010. Statistical analysis was carried out using accident frequencies and accident rates. The results showed that Collision between vehicles has the highest ratio among the accident with 58% followed by crashing with stationary with 21%. Approximately 47% of total accidents occur at intersections, 90% of them occurred at un-signalized intersections (roundabout and T-intersections). About 68% of fatal accidents occur at road links. The sideswipe accidents have the highest ratio among accident types. The accident rates for roundabouts (0.61 accidents per million entering vehicles) are higher than the T-intersection rates (0.48 accidents per million entering vehicles). It seems that traffic volume and drivers' characteristics, road network types, weather and time were the major factors affecting the number of accidents. The results of the study may have significant consideration for transportation and road safety planning in Sultanate of Oman and other countries in the Middle East area, especially Gulf countries with similar conditions. Language: en
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