Development of a highway safety auditing program for Turkey

Abstract

Road accidents are serious problems throughout the world, in social, health and economic terms. The number of road accidents in Turkey tend to increase at a rate of approximately 20 per cent a year and most of the road accidents, around 87 per cent, occurs in urban areas.Improving highway safety requires consideration of three factors, the road environment, road user and motor vehicle. The safety programs developed in Turkey have mostly considered the road user as the main factor responsible from traffic accidents. Although a majority is attributed to road user factor in the crashes, the improvements in the road environment are expected to be more effective. The aim of this study was to develop road safety audit, a newly developed proactive strategy to reduce the road casualties, for municipalities in Turkey. After a thorough review of the existing techniques for road safety auditing in various countries, a procedure has been developed for Turkey. The developed procedure was tested on Dolmabahçe Street in İstanbul, and the findings of this audit and possible recommendations for solutions have been reported. Finally, conclusions of the research and recommendations for further research have been summarized.