Impacts of Roadway Condition and Traffic on Road Safety

Abstract

Road safety in India is the poorest in the world. Road safety is one of the most important problems in our
society. In India the rate of accident is directly proportional to increasing number of vehicles. According to MORTH2014 India has the highest number of accidents in the world. Accident severity has been increasing year by year due to
increasing in number of vehicles. Road users in India are heterogeneous in nature, ranging from pedestrians, animal -
driven carts, bi-cycles, rickshaws, hand carts and tractor trolleys, to various categories of two/three wheelers, motor
cars, buses, trucks, and multi-axle commercial vehicles etc. Accident leads to disablement, death, damage to health and
property, social suffering and general degradation of environment. The high accident rate is largely attributed to the
inadequacy of the highways and other main roads to meet the traffic demands, road user behavior, vehicle defects, poor
road geometrics and visibility. Road accidents inflict heavy economic loss to the country. Road Safety is necessary to
reduce accident involving both human and vehicles there by making the road more safe and user friendly.
National Highway 6, commonly referred to as NH 6, is a busy National Highway in India that runs through
Gujarat, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Jharkhand and West Bengal state in India. The highway passes through
the cities of Surat, Dhule, Jalgaon, Bhusawal, Amravati, Nagpur, Bhandara, Durg, Raipur, Mahasamund, Sambalpur,
Kolkata. The road is the part of National Highway network of India, and it is officially listed as running over 1,949 km
from Mumbai to Kolkata. It is also known as Mumbai Road. NH-06 is one of the major connectivity from Nagpur to
Amravati which caters to the need of transportation of light goods to heavy goods and passengers. The number of
accidents is rising up every year due to increasing number of vehicles. The location in a roadway where the traffic
accident often occurs is called a black spot. The accident data is analyzed using accident frequency and severity index
method. The safety deficiencies were detected to minimize accidents and save the road users. The de ficiencies along with
the measures for further improvement have been presented in this thesis.