High-risk road accident corridors in Dhaka, Bangladesh

Abstract

Bangladesh has one of the highest fatality rates in road accidents and to address the safety problem is a serious concern. Dhaka is the most vulnerable city of the country. Bangladesh Road Transport Authority maintains a database of accidents using outdated software that lacks in geo-referencing facility. This makes the analysis of accident locations a challenging task. The area for this study was the Dhaka Metropolitan Police area where the concerned forty one police stations are responsible for collecting traffic accident data. The Highway Safety Manual identifies the “Network Screening” as the first step of the Roadway Safety Management Process. This study focuses on locating the accidents on urban roadways in Dhaka and identifies thirty corridors and ranks them using geo-referenced data through developing and using a GIS database. Dhaka-Mymensing Road was found to be the most vulnerable road corridor followed by Airport Road and Mirpur Road respectively. The study recommended special attention and special “Diagnostic” studies as explained in the Highway Safety Manual for the high-risk corridors and to put emphasis on the accident data collection and reporting system. Adoption of modern technologies like GPS and GIS in collecting and reporting of the traffic accident data was emphasized