Abstract
Saudi Arabia is one of the countries with the highest number of road accidents and associated fatalities in the world. Speeding has been identified as an important cause of increased traffic accidents, which also aggravate their severity. Road safety improvement strategies are primarily based on the accurate identification of accident hotspots. Installing speed cameras at a network level is an expensive road safety measure, and its spatiotemporal effectiveness should be assessed. In this study, a traffic accident risk assessment framework has been developed and implemented on the 84 km long Buraydah Ring Road in the Qassim region of Saudi Arabia. The selected highway was divided into 42 (×2 km long) segments using the ArcGIS software. A risk scoring scheme was developed to incorporate both the frequency and severity of road accidents. Speed cameras installation at various segments showed a 70% decline in total accident counts, 53% in accidents with property damage, 84% decline in accidents causing injury, and complete absence of accidents with fatalities. The 48% segments were identified as hotspots with risk level ≥ medium, while the speed cameras installation completely eliminated the hotspots from the study area. The proposed framework can be implemented on major high-speed highways, accommodating high traffic volumes, for hotspot identification and evaluation of various road safety measures in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.
Highlights
More than 300,000 traffic accidents occur in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) every year [9]
Traffic accidents account for over 30 percent of hospital bed occupancy, and the country is losing more than SR 13 billion due to traffic accidents [5]
The main goal of this research is to develop a framework for traffic accident risk identification and management for Qassim region
Summary
The proposed framework can be implemented on major high-speed highways, accommodating high traffic volumes, for hotspot identification and evaluation of various road safety measures in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. Roadway accidents are one of the leading causes of injuries and fatalities in many countries around the world. With approximately 1.35 million fatalities, road traffic accidents have become a global public health concern and is reported to cause of deaths for children and young adults aged 5–29 years [2,3,4]. More than 300,000 traffic accidents occur in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) every year [9]. A crash is associated with driver characteristics (such as sleep, distraction, overspending), accident characteristics (such as sudden lane deviation or collisions with other moving cars, road barriers, pedestrians, or motorcyclists), and environmental conditions [10]
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