Search

For short-distance travellers, two-wheelers have become a standard transportation mode and an ideal alternative (compact size, economical, easy parking), to four-wheelers particularly in developing countries. However, two-wheelers are associated with different safety concerns. In India, two-wheelers are more vulnerable to fatal and serious injuries per kilometres of travel in contrast to drivers of other vehicles. Most of these accidents occur on junctions and are likely to be fatal and more severe in contrast to nonjunction accidents. This research article aims to examines different risk variables associated with motorized two-wheeler crashes at intersections (signalized and un-signalized) in Haridwar and Dehradun districts of Uttarakhand state, India. A multinominal logistic approach was used to analyse a dataset of 680 two-wheeler crashes occurred within four years (2016–2019). The accident severities were categorized into three groups, i.e. fatal injury, serious injury and normal injury. The risk variables were categorized into five significant classes, i.e. riders' attributes, environmental attributes, junction crash attributes and land-use attributes. However, the majority of this study's findings endorses the concepts derived from earlier researches that used alternative (for instance; random forest, ordered logit, etc.) analytical methodologies in crash severity analysis. The model results showed that some variables (e.g. age, gender, adverse environmental conditions, time of crash and location of the junction) increases the possibility of mortal injuries. In contrast, some variables (day of crash, type of intersection and type of controls at intersections) decrease the probability of mortal injuries compared with minor or severe injuries. Based on the model's findings, policy recommendations are made, such as enforcing rules, advanced traffic management systems and road safety campaigns. For instance, education of young drivers can be an effective way to reduce crash severity as they are physiologically less sensitive towards the risk associated with crashes, thus, their involvement results in more severe crashes. Additionally, the results suggested that treatment measures such as transforming an un-controlled junction into signalized or all-way stop controls can be a productive approach for improving the safety of uncontrolled junctions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In India, transportation sector is growing fast and the number of vehicles on Indian roads is increasing at a rate more than 7 percent a year. During the period of 50 years from 1951 to 2001, the number of vehicles has increased from 0.3 million to 43 million i.e. an increase of almost 143 times. This has led to overcrowded roads and noise pollution. The transportation sector is one of the major contributors to noise in urban areas, accounting to as much as 55 percent of total noise on the arterials. Interrupted traffic flow noise is associated with the typical congested conditions in the urban area and has different characteristics from the traffic noise generated by free flow traffic on rural roads. These differences arise from the various traffic flow characteristics such as heterogeneity of traffic, flow speeds etc., which is in contrast to traffic on rural roads, where the flow is generally continuous. In this paper, analytical modelling has been used for predicting road traffic noise. Two models namely FHWA (Federal Highway Administration), and CORTN (Calculation of Road Traffic Noise) were applied. The data collected at ten different locations selected on the basis of land usages in urban areas of Lucknow, a historical city in India has been analyzed and utilized for modeling purpose. It was observed that predicted noise levels using a modified FHWA model are more close to observed noise levels than the noise levels predicted by CORTN Model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]