Towards Sustainable Transportation: The Role of Black Spot Analysis in Improving Road Safety

Ioannis Karamanlis, Andreas Nikiforiadis, George Botzoris, Alexandros Kokkalis and Socrates Basbas ()
Additional contact information
Ioannis Karamanlis: Department of Civil Engineering, Democritus University of Thrace, 67100 Xanthi, Greece
Andreas Nikiforiadis: School of Rural & Surveying Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece
George Botzoris: Department of Civil Engineering, Democritus University of Thrace, 67100 Xanthi, Greece
Alexandros Kokkalis: Department of Civil Engineering, Democritus University of Thrace, 67100 Xanthi, Greece
Socrates Basbas: School of Rural & Surveying Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 19, 1-12

Abstract: Sustainable transportation goals include an improvement in the level of road safety worldwide. It is well known that traffic accidents are one of the major causes of death worldwide. Black spots are road locations with a higher than statistically expected number of accidents. Remedying black spots would decisively improve road safety. A literature review of black spot identification methods, i.e., accident numbers, accident rates related to exposure, severity of accidents, Poisson and quality control methods, is presented within the framework of this paper. The various approaches adopted by key European and other countries are also summarized and evaluated. An important parameter is the unit length of a road, where accidents are referred. The quality of accident records is also critical. It is concluded that the coupling of statistical and accident severity index methods can contribute to assessing road infrastructure in a more holistic way and, therefore, in providing more reliable results with regard to the road safety level. The design and implementation of effective road safety strategies, based on black spot analysis, can be of great value for the decision makers and decision takers who are involved in the development of a sustainable transportation system.

Keywords: black spots; road safety; safety indicators; comparative analysis; threshold values (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/19/14478/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/19/14478/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:19:p:14478-:d:1253600

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().