EVALUATION AND MITIGATION OF THE RISK OF ROAD ACCIDENT IN URBAN AREAS ACCORDING TO TECHNIQUES BASED ON HUMAN-ROAD INTERACTION

Deaths and injuries resulting from road traffic crashes is a serious problem globally and current trends suggest that this will continue to be the case in the foreseeable future. The number of road traffic deaths continues to climb, reaching a high of 1.35 million in 2016. That’s nearly 3 700 people dying on the world’s roads every day. While progress has been made by countries in strengthening road traffic laws, improving the safety of roads and vehicles, and enhancing post-crash care, the number of road traffic deaths and injuries on the world’s roads remains unacceptably high. Road traffic injury is indeed the 8th leading cause of death for all age groups, and it is also the leading cause of death for children and young adults aged 5-29 years, signalling a need for a shift in the current child health agenda, which has largely neglected the road safety. Of the total 1.35 million people dying in road traffic crashes annually, at least 30% are in urban areas. Because of the enormous losses to society that are caused by crashes, and the need for implementing evidence-based road safety policies and measures to reduce the number of crashes, researchers continuously aim to gain a deeper understanding of factors that affect the occurrence and severity of crashes. It is widely recognized that human factors may contribute to accident involvement in traffic. From an engineering as well as road accident administration point of view it is generally accepted that in the interaction of the vehicle, infrastructure and driver, the driver related factors were solely to blame for around 50% of accidents and the Human Factors are somehow involved in the occurrence of accidents in over 90% of the cases. It is still widely held today that since human error is a factor in some 90% of road crashes, the leading response should be to persuade road users to adopt “error-free” behaviour. But error is part of the human condition. Aspects of human behaviour in the context of road traffic safety can certainly be altered. Nonetheless, errors can also be effectively reduced by changing the immediate environment rather than focusing solely on changing the human condition. Road users try to drive or behave in a safe way but the task is complex and the environment is not designed to prevent errors occurring. This research starts from a different perspective, i.e. that in many cases the design of the road environment can be further adjusted to human capabilities. The main objective for this dissertation is therefore to investigate human-road interaction in urban areas for different road users and for different road elements. Six case studies analysing the human-road interaction with different approaches for different types of road users and for different road elements are presented in Chapter 2-7. The road users considered are different both for socio-demographic characteristics (age, gender) and for means of transport (drivers, pedestrian, bicyclists). The road elements considered are intersections (roundabouts and T-junctions) and pedestrian paths.