ROAD TRAFFIC SAFETY

LECTURE 4: Blackspot Identification

Dr. Madhumita Paul
Assistant Professor Department of Civil Engineering IIT
Kharagpur
Criteria for listing crash locations

• Hazardous locations
• High crash locations
• Probability of accidents is significantly higher than average
• Frequency and/or Severity
• Hazardous highway locations may or may not be high
crash/severity locations
• Genesis of black spots
• Blackspots are short stretches where accidents/ fatalities on the
road network repeatedly take place due to various reasons
• Changes in the developmental scenario in the region
• Changes in the roadside environment
• Unplanned developments/unauthorized constructions on/near the roads
like advertisement boards, Poles, statues, buildings, trees, bushes, etc.
• Rectifying the blackspots is a continuous process

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Background

• Identification of sites/segments is the most fundamental and crucial

step, since the improper identification of high priority sites results
in less cost-effective solutions

• These high priority sites are generally referred to as Black Spots,

High Crash Locations (HCLs), Hazardous Locations, etc.

Blackspot Definition
• Black Spot is the general term used to recognize a hazardous location
based on accident frequency and crash rates. These are the sections
of roadway that are designated as being accident prone (Mandloi, et al.,
2003)

All accident-prone locations are blackspot or not

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 Background

Blackspot Definition as per MoRTH

• Road Accident Black spot is a stretch of National
Highway of about 500 m in length in which either
5 road accidents (in all three years put together
involving fatalities/ grievous injuries) took place
during the last 3 calendar years OR 10 fatalities
(in all three years put together) took place during
the last 3 calendar years

• All the data to be provided by police authorities/ National Crime Records Bureau

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Black spots

• Delhi Traffic Police

• 500 m diameter with "10 or more total crashes" or "3 or more
fatal crashes" within one year
• Designating an accident-prone location as "Black Spot“
based on combined criteria of the number of fatalities
and accidents

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Identification of hazardous locations

• Compare locations through various ranking techniques

• Procedure 1 - Frequency Method
• Procedure 2 - Crash Rate Method
• Procedure 3 - Frequency Rate Method
• Procedure 4 - Rate Quality Control Method
• Procedure 5 - Crash Severity Method
• Procedure 6 - Hazard Index Method
• Procedure 7 - Hazardous Roadway Features Inventory Methods
• Procedure 8 – Safety Potential Methods

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Procedure 1 – Frequency Method
• Used to identify and rank locations
• On basis of number of crashes
• Easiest to apply
• Used by many agencies to select initial group of high
crash locations
• For further analysis
• A critical value must be established for location selection
(e.g., 9 or more crashes per year)
• Can reasonably be studied by the agency
• High-crash site
• This procedure is most applicable and efficient for street systems in
small cities and local street systems within “larger cities”

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Advantages
• Effective as a tool for providing continuous monitoring of
the accident situation in an area
• A simple, direct method for identifying hazardous
locations
Disadvantages
• No consideration of exposure (i.e., traffic volumes) to the
hazard
• Does not account for accident severity
• Over-representation

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Procedure 2 – Crash Rate Method
• Combines crash frequency with various exposure
factors
• Volume of traffic
• ADT/AADT
• Vehicle KMs of Travel (VKT)
• Population
• Registered vehicles

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Procedure 2 – Crash Rate Method

• Crash rate at a spot

Freq. of crashes*106
Rsp= crashes per million of
(365)(T)(V) entering vehicles

where T = Period of study (years)

V = ADT/AADT of spot

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 Procedure 2 – Crash Rate Method

Crash rate at a roadway segment

Freq. of crashes*106 crashes per million vehicles
Rse = (365)(T)(V)(L) kms of travel

where T = Period of study

V = Average Daily Traffic
L = Length of the segment (kms)

Roadway segments of less than one-half mile should not be considered as

sections
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 Procedure 2 – Crash Rate Method

Crash Rate for an area =

Freq. of crashes*1000 crashes per 1,000 Population
Population

Freq. of crashes*1000 crashes per 1,000 Registered

Registered Vehicles Vehicles

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Example Problem: Frequency Vs. Rate

C rash Data for 2017

T o tal o f
Nam e o f the A ppro ach
T o tal Injury P DO R ear E nd A ng le
Intersectio n V o lum es
(A A DT )
C rook R oad &
35,700 38 7 31 8 9
A uburn R oad
Livernois R oad &
25,500 12 0 12 8 0
A uburn R oad
Ply mouth R oad &
48,500 50 11 39 32 7
Middlebelt R oad

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Procedure 2: Crash Rate

For segment
Junction?

Assumption: There is a linear relationship between the number of accidents and the traffic
volume.

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Advantages
• Combines the use of an exposure factor (traffic volumes)
and a frequency factor
• Remains a relatively simple, direct method

Disadvantages
• May overrepresent hazard at locations with very low traffic

volume
• Does not account for accident severity

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Procedure 3 - Frequency Rate Method

• Normally applied by first selecting a large sample of

high crash locations based on a “number of crashes”
• Crash rates are computed and locations are priority
ranked by crash rate
• Compare dual influence of frequency and rate in a
matrix pattern

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Multidimensional Crash Data Analysis
Matrix: An example

Worst
Cell
Crash Rate

Crash Frequency
Systemwide accident and volume data must be available
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Objective: to reduce accident numbers and rates
Advantages
• Uses both frequencies and rates to assess hazard
• Reduces the exaggerated effect of the accident rate on low volume
roads and the exaggerated effect of high frequencies at high-volume
Intersections

Disadvantages
• May require considerable funds and manpower for manual
application
• Complex than frequency method or rate method
• May require personnel with experience in highway safety
• Does not account for accident severity

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Procedure 4 - Rate Quality Control Method

• Utilizes a statistical test

• Determines whether crash rate at a location is significantly
higher than a predetermined average rate for locations of
similar characteristics
• Assumption
• Crashes are rare event
• Occurrence of crashes can be approximated by Poisson
distribution
• Crash rate at a location is compared to a “Critical
Rate”
• Based on average system-wide crash rate for highway type
and vehicle exposure

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Procedure 4 - Rate Quality Control Method
• Equation for calculating critical rate is as follows:
Ra 1
Rc = Ra + K +
where, M 2M
Rc = Critical rate for a location (spot or section)
Ra = average crash rate for locations of like
characteristics (crash per million vehicles or million
vehicle-km) (spots or similar road types)
M = Average number of vehicles traversing through
locations during study period (millions)
K = A probability factor (determined by desired level
of statistical significance for the equation)
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Procedure 4 - Rate Quality Control
Method
• P (Probability) 0.995 0.975 0.950 0.925 0.900
• K-value 2.576 1.960 1.645 1.440 1.282

• The most commonly used K value is 1.645

(P = 0.950)

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Rate Quality Control Example
Location Crashes/year ADT Crash Rate

1 38 20000 5.21

2 42 25000 4.60
3 41 20000 5.62
4 75 80000 2.57
5 18 20000 2.47
6 20 30000 1.83
7 40 50000 2.19
8 25 35000 1.96
Total 280000 26.45
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Rate Quality Control Example
Ra= 26.45/8= 3.31 accidents/million entering vehicles
Average ADT= 2,80,000/8= 35,000
M = 365*35,000/10,00,000 = 12.775
Ra 1
Rc = Ra + K +
M 2M
3.31 1
Rc = 3.31 + 1.645 +
12.775 2 × 12.775

(K=1.645 for significance level of 0.95)

Rc=3.31+1.645 x 0.509+0.039
Rc= 4.18 accidents/million vehicles
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 Rate Quality Control Example
▪ Since the crash rates for locations 1, 2 and 3 are higher than
the critical rate (4.18), these locations are hazardous
locations. Location 3 is the most hazardous compared to
other two locations

Location accidents/year ADT Crash Rate/

million vehicle
1 38 20000 5.21
2 42 25000 4.60

3 41 20000 5.62
4 75 80000 2.57

5 18 20000 2.47 27
Procedure 5 - Crash Severity Method

• Used to identify and priority-rank high-crash

locations
• Some agencies consider only injury and fatality
crashes in identifying hazardous locations
• Others apply weighting factors to crash based on their
severity and then compute some form of severity index
• Relative Severity Index (RSI)
• Crash type, area type, crash cost by severity

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Procedure 5 - Crash severity

• Crash severity are often classified within following five

categories
• Fatal Crash - one or more deaths
• Type-A Injury Crash - Bleeding wound, distorted member,
person carried from scene (incapacitating)
• Type-B Injury Crash - victim has visible signs of injury, either in a
physical or mental sense (Bruises, abrasion, swelling, limping
(non-incapacitating)
• Type-C Injury Crash - Involving no visible injuries but complaint
of pain (probable)
• PDO Crash - Property Damage Only
• In India, four categories

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1. Fatal crash (at least one person died immediately or
post-hospitalization)

Non-fatal crash
2. Grievous/ major injury crash (required
hospitalization)

3. Minor injury crash

4. No-injury/ ‘property damage only’ crash

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Procedure 5 - Crash severity

• Some agencies consider only injury and fatality crashes in

identifying hazardous locations
• Equivalent Property Damage Only (EPDO) Method (Kentucky)
EPDO = 9.5 (F+A) + 3.5 (B+C) + PDO

where, F = No. of fatal crashes

A = No. of A-Type injury crashes
B = No. of B-Type injury crashes
C = No. of C-Type injury crashes
PDO = No. of PDO crashes
• Equivalent factors vary
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 Equivalent Property Damage Only (EPDO) Method
• Considers all levels of severity of crashes occurring at a
particular site/stretch
• Total accident for each site is expressed in terms of its
equivalent property damage only (EPDO)

 Number of property damage only crashes, number of fatalities,

number of major injuries and number of minor injuries for
each site are multiplied by their equivalent property damage
weight factors and added to calculate the EPDO for each
site/stretch

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• Average Economic Cost by Injury Severity, or Crash
(National Safety Council)

Severity Cost
Death (K) $1,512,000

Disabling (A) $88,500

Evident (B) $25,600

Possible ( C) $21,000

No injury observed (O) $11,300 33

• For calculation of EPDO weight factors, costs of various accident
types may be taken suitably by the analyst
• For example: property damage INR 16,200, fatality INR
5,35,489, major injury INR 2,42,736 and minor injury INR
18,855. These costs are taken from a TCS study conducted in
1999 (Sen et al., 2010)
• Accordingly, EPDO weight factors for various crash types are
obtained as follows:
• Study in India

Crash Type EPDO Weight Factors

Property Damage 1
Minor Injury 1.16
Major Injury 15
Fatal 33

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 Classification of Accidents
Chainage
Major Minor No Injury
Fatalities
Injuries Injuries Crashes
Example
0-1 1 2 1 3
• Consider the following crash 1-2 2 4 2 0
data base (as mentioned in 2-3 0 4 4 4
the table) 3-4 3 4 8 3
4-5 1 3 5 1
• Identify 5 most hazardous 5-6 3 3 2 2
locations (blackspots) using 6-7 1 2 3 4
EPDO method 7-8 0 2 1 3
8-9 1 1 0 2
9-10 1 2 3 1
10-11 0 3 3 1
11-12 2 5 4 3
12-13 0 1 5 0
13-14 1 4 4 3
14-15 2 4 5 3 35
 Solution

Classification of Accidents
Chainage Major Minor No Injury EPDO Rank
Fatalities
Injuries Injuries Crashes
= 1*33+2*15+1*1.16+3*1
0-1 1 2 1 3 11
= 67.16
1-2 2 4 2 0 128.3 5
2-3 0 4 4 4 68.64 9
3-4 3 4 8 2 171.3 1
4-5 1 3 5 1 84.8 7
5-6 3 3 2 2 148.3 3
6-7 1 2 3 4 70.48 8
7-8 0 2 1 3 34.16 13
8-9 1 1 0 2 50 15
9-10 1 2 3 1 67.48 10
10-11 0 3 3 1 49.48 12
11-12 2 5 4 3 148.6 2
12-13 0 1 5 0 20.8 14
13-14 1 4 4 3 100.6 6
14-15 2 4 5 3 134.8 4

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PROCEDURE 6 - Hazard Index Method
• Employs formula to develop a rating index
• Factors considered
• Crash rate
• Crash severity
• Sight distance
• Volume/capacity ratio
• Traffic conflicts
• Erratic manoeuvres
• Driver expectancy
• Information system deficiencies
Process
Each factor is given a weightage by a weighting
factor. The weighings are based on a survey of
professionals in the traffic safety field
• The resulting partial hazard indices (one for each
factor) are summed to obtain the hazard index for
the locations.
• Locations are then ranked by magnitude of the
hazard
index.

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PROCEDURE 7 - Hazardous Roadway Features
Inventory Method
• Blunt-end guardrail barrier terminals
• Narrow bridges
• Steep roadside slopes
• Rigid roadside objects
• Narrow lanes and shoulders
• Unprotected bridge/overpass structures
• Slippery pavements
• Sharp radii on horizontal curves and ramps
• Hazardous highway-railroad grade crossings
• Identification of such hazardous roadway features
can be performed in many different ways
• Information from systemwide highway inventories
can be used to select specific hazardous features
for further review.
• Hazard report forms which are completed by local
police officers when they observe a highway site or
condition which they perceive as hazardous.
• Other agencies uti1ize routine preventative
surveillance of highways
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