• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.67-74
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• 2008

Even though the efficiency of a point based black spot improvement project has been low, none of solid methodology, which is based on section not point, and is considered as one of the promising substitute, has not been come up with yet. Thus, this research aims at proposing the adequate length of a hazardous section and a method to set segment length over which the project needs to be performed on rural highways by analyzing the distances from project-conducted sites to new black spots in the following year and distances between project needed but not conducted sites and new black spots in the following year. According to the analysis, the probability of being a new black spot near the project conducted intersection is higher than that of a non-conducted intersection within 2km, however, no strong relationships between project types and distance distribution have been found. Based on those findings, a method to determine the target segment including adjacent black spots within 2 kilometers-range was proposed.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.129-142
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• 2017

Accident Black Spot Improvement Project is the representative road safety intervention to eliminate environmental risk factors on the roadway by installing road safety facilities. Although it is one of the main road safety projects in Korea, there has been a lack of effort analyzing the traffic accident reduction effects of this project. In this study, therefore, we selected 4,171 road black spots from 2004 to 2013 and investigated the traffic accident reduction effects of 5 road safety facilities by using "Comparison Group(C-G)" method. Through the analysis, it was found that the number of traffic accidents were lowered by 4.45% with traffic islands, 32.17% with road paved markers, and 24.13% with speed cameras, respectively. However, 0.61% with pedestrian fencing and 1.67% with skid resistant pavement were increased on the other hand. In addition, we also analyzed traffic accident reduction facilities' performance on specific types of collision mentioned in manual on road safety facilities by Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport. It was shown that the number of bad weather traffic accidents were reduced by 52.96% with road paved markers, pedestrians accidents were reduced by 62.77% with pedestrian fencing and rear-end collisions were reduced by 26.00% with skid resistant pavement.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.143-155
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• 2016

Recently, a massive loss of life and property is occurring in Korea due to traffic accidents, with the rapid increase in cars. For improvement of traffic safety, the Korea Transportation Safety Authority intensively analyzes accident data in local governments with low traffic safety index, performs a field investigation to extract problems and offers local governments improvements for problems, by conducting the 'Special Survey of Actual Conditions of Traffic Safety' each year, starting 2008. But local governments cannot strongly push forward the improvement projects due to the limited budget and the uncertainty of the improvement plan effects. Therefore, this study suggested a model which applied the Utility concept to the AHP theory, in order to efficiently decide a priority of the improvement plans in accident black spots in consideration of the limited budget of local governments. The number of accidents in each spot for improvement and accident severity, traffic volume, pedestrian volume, the improvement project cost and the accident reduction effect were chosen as evaluation factors for deciding a priority, and data about the improvement plan costs and the accident reduction effects, traffic accidents and traffic volume in the spots to undergo the special research on the real condition of traffic accident in the past were collected from the existing studies. Then, regression analysis was carried out and the Utility Curve of each evaluation factor was computed. Based on the AHP analysis findings, this study devised a priority decision method which calculated the weight and the utility function of each evaluation factor and compared the total utility values. The AHP analysis findings showed that among the evaluation factors, accident severity had the biggest importance and it was followed by the improvement plan cost, the number of accidents, the improvement effect, traffic volume and pedestrian volume. The calculated utility function shows a rise in utility, as the variables of the 5 evaluation factors; the number of accidents, accident severity, the improvement plan effect, traffic volume and pedestrian volume increase and a fall in utility, as the variables of the improvement plan cost increase, since the improvement plan cost is included in the budget spent by a local government.