Abstract:
Traffic accidents worldwide are among the most alarming phenomena because they cost billions of dollars due to death rates and property damage. In Ethiopia, the accident fatality rate is becoming one of the most serious problems. Specifically, in rural highways wherein there are problems with traffic control device enforcement and geometric deficiencies. In the Southern Nation (SNNPR), the Gedeo zone faces a similar problem that is considered a hot issue on-road crashes. This study focused on two scopes: the influence of traffic control devices and the other one was the geometric characteristic related to road crashes. The data collection method was a purposive sampling technique considering both primary and secondary data collection system. Direct field observations were conducted, such as field survey and recording of the existing road geometric elements to figure out which geometric element contributory to traffic crashes. Aside from traffic control devices, the study also focused on the road geometric characteristics elements on a road traffic accident. The data collected from the police traffic was categorized by clustering the road into different road segments composed of the same geometric characteristics. The severity of the accident analyzed and identified the hazardous road sections (black spot area). The relationships of accident crash established between the influence of traffic control access devices and geometric elements on the crash reduction at the identified accident-prone areas. Further, the study used ANN modeling through engineering software MATLAB R2016a to analyze the weightage of crashes on specified road segments concerning geometric road characteristics. Hence, the gradient carriageway width, super-elevation, cross slope, gradient, sight distance number of the horizontal curve, number of vertical curves, and AADT are the major factors for the occurrence of both fatal and injury at the blackspot segment along the rural highway.
Keywords: Blackspot, Road
