When, where and why road crashes are likely on the Kings Highway NSW?

Rural road crashes are a major problem in regional Australia. The reasons for these crashes are a complex interplay between human behaviour, road characteristics and environmental factors. This paper will consider the contribution that road geometry makes to the incidence of crashes 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 crashes with road segmentation calculating sinuosity index, critical visual 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 a crash is higher during the day on downhill curvy segments of the road. This is not the case for night driving where the incidence of crash is similar on both straight and curved roads segments because of the headlight effect and limited background visual field.

Language

  • English

Media Info

  • Pagination: 14p
  • Monograph Title: Taking action together: 1st Australasian Road Safety Conference (ARSC2015), 14-16 October, Gold Coast, Queensland

Subject/Index Terms

Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 01591510
  • Record Type: Publication
  • Source Agency: ARRB
  • Files: ITRD, ATRI
  • Created Date: Feb 26 2016 9:31AM