부산대학교 도서관

There is a growing global concern over burgeoning road accident-induced losses. Terrain conditions in the mountainous regions make roads prone to fatal accidents. Sinuosity (high curvature), gradient and width of the hill roads are identified as major factors making these roads accident-prone and based upon mutual correlation of these basic road parameters, a methodology is evolved for delineating high accident risk-prone stretches of mountain roads. This methodology is used for demarcating differential probability of accident risk along the National Highway and Main District Road network of Uttarkashi District, Uttarakhand (India) and the results are correlated with real road accident database. Application of the proposed methodology thus exhibits potential for reducing the frequency of road accidents by adopting suitable site-specific measures at high accident risk-prone road stretches. These could be in the form of bringing forth awareness and by initiating suitable changes in the techno-legal regime for controlling vehicular traffic as also initiating structural measures and providing for quick post-accident search, rescue and relief facilities. These would reduce frequency of road accidents and provide quick relief to accident victims and at the same time reduce economic and human toll of road accidents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]