Abstract:
Traffic accident is increasing enormously globally day to day. For the developing countries
like Ethiopia road traffic accident is among the main economic, social and political
problems.
Numerous amount of research had been carried out on traffic accident. Few researchers
studied the effect of road surface condition on traffic accident. The number of researchers
put a lot of factors that might increase the traffic accidents. The most critical factors were
drivers, vehicle condition, roadway conditions and environmental conditions. The hardness
to maneuver, the problem to take and give lane for other vehicles, discomfort of drivers and
so on are the main factors of the road surface defects causing road traffic accidents.
So that this research is initiated to evaluate the correlation of road surface condition to road
traffic accidents. The severity of the surface defects were collected from condition survey
and the number of accident data of study area has been collected from Gamo Gofa zone
road and transport office and Arba Minch zuria traffic police directive. The multiple linear
regression model has been done for analysis of each study stretches by taking the number
of road traffic accidents as dependent variables and the road surface defects as independent
variables. Strongly correlated road surface defects to rate of accident were edge break,
potholes, rutting and roughness. In addition to this the pavement condition index is
calculated in order to distinguish the category of the road pavement current condition. Road
pavement condition category is the qualitative measure and this qualitative data had been
quantified from 0 to 5 which assigned to the pavement condition score. The effects of this
quantified numerical road surface condition on road traffic accident was modeled by using
multiple linear regression. The modeled analysis indicates that the statistical indicators
shows good fittings.
The study concludes that highest accident rate occurred at the road stretch which had very
poor pavement condition and lowest Pavement Condition Score. The increase in pavement
defects also increases the rate of traffic accident. Finally the study forwarded engineering
solutions and recommendations for the improvements of traffic safety.
