Number of accidents is growing steadily in developing countries. In many countries it tends to dominate the statistics as cause of untimed death. According to the police statistics about 90% of these accidents are mainly caused by human factor: negligence, speeding, loss of control, rushing on to the road etc. However, whenever an accident occurs, there are always the three main factors involved, the driver, the vehicle and the environment. If the environment did not have any impact on the road safety, the accidents should be distributed randomly along the road. However there are certain sites where several accidents occur while there are only few in other locations. These sites are called dangerous locations or accident black spots because statistically they can be proved out to be more accident prone than the other road sections. Several international experiments in developed and in developing countries have shown that by improving the dangerous locations significant accident reduction can be achieved. Even 80...90% of accidents can disappear. It is known that the total cost of accidents are very high: in country with 200 000 vehicles they are estimated to cause annual losses of 50-150 Million US$. Subsequently the savings in accident costs are often so high that any investment will be paid back in months. This Manual has been prepared by Finnconsult for The Economic Commission for Africa in connection with the 2nd Road Safety Congress of Africa. Because the effect of the countermeasures has mostly been estimated by using material from several countries, programme of continuous follow up is recommended. This will facilitate updating the manual and further ensure that the correct measures will be chosen and that the economic calculations will be reliable. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting