India, like many other developing countries, has a considerable length ofits road network constituted by two-lane undivided rural highways with noaccess control. The traffic on these roads is highly heterogeneous with both motorized and non-motorized vehicles sharing the carriageway. These highways pass through a variety of land use, with varying levels of uncontrolled roadside activity. Road accidents on these highways have been on the increase over the past years. The present study is an attempt to understand the relative impact of various access related factors on occurrence of road accidents along these highways. Negative Binomial regression has been used in the study to find out the traffic and road environment factors that significantly contribute to the occurrence of road accidents. The elasticity of these factors on occurrence of different types and severities of road accidents has been found out. Presence of non-motorized traffic, presence of two wheelers and density of private and public access pointsalong the highway were found to be significantly contributing to the occurrence of road accidents. Based on the findings from the study, differentaccess control measures that can help in reducing road accidents have been suggested.
Abstract