Data critical for road safety

Targeted policy and infrastructural interventions to boost road safety and prevent accidents rely greatly on accurate, scientifically sound data collection and analysis

Flash floods on roads notorious for poor walkability and motorised commute have triggered a massive drop in the city’s safety quotient. As rains intensify and commute woes worsen, the focus has shifted yet again on the need for sound infrastructural interventions that are based on concrete data and analytics.

But as traffic and transportation engineering experts emphasise, the data collection methods need a serious rejig. Publicly available data furnished by the Bengaluru Traffic Police shows that the city recorded 224 fatal accidents till April this year, accounting for a total of 231 deaths. As many as 1,055 people were injured in the non-fatal accidents reported during the same period.

Now, to make the city’s roads accident-free and safe, this data needs to dive deep into the specifics. “Targeted interventions for accident prevention mandates clear data. It is critical to identify the vulnerable road-users, the major culprits, the vehicle types and categories, the time and location of the accidents,” points out mobility analyst Ashish Verma from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc).

A lot depends on the accuracy of the data collected. “The accident data we get from the First Information Reports (FIRs), the City Crime Record Bureaus and other sources show that the maximum deaths of pedestrians are caused by two-wheelers. But the focus remains on heavy vehicles,” Verma notes.

Data analyses of motorcyclist fatalities show that a good proportion of deaths are caused by fellow two-wheelers. But these statistics rarely come to the fore. “There is a need to record the time of the day, the location, the traffic scenario and other factors. We need standardisation of scientific data collection for good analytics and comparison.”

Established accident protocols demand that every possible data on the driver, vehicle, roadway and victims are collected at the earliest to analyse information scientifically. For instance, in crashes involving pedestrians, the age groups and relationships of accidents to physical capacities and to psychological test results are critical.

The quality of data collected also determines the professional reconstruction of an accident. The total accident hazard is expressed as the number of accidents of all types per km of a particular highway or street.