EXPOSURE AND TRIGGERING FACTORS OF ROAD (UN-) SAFETY AND RISKS IN IASI MUNICIPALITY (ROMANIA)

Road accidents are among the leading factors of the general mortality and worldwide about 1.3 million of peoples die yearly in road car crash and between twenty and fifty million suffer different injuries. Romania tops the list in European statistics, with an increased mortality rate caused by road accidents. Overall, this great number of road accidents is caused mainly by the indiscipline of road users doubled by the poor quality of road infrastructure. Regionally, the distribution of road accidents on the Romanian territory is closely related to the presence of the large urban settlements, the road density and connectivity with points or sectors having high values of traffic. Locally, the concentration of accidents in some “black spots” (hotspots) may be influenced by the road geometry, by the complexity of traffic etc. Using GIS software (SAGA GIS, TNTmips etc.) to process a complex database of road accidents (2007-2011), the authors apply the kernel function with different bandwidth to create an expressive spatial pattern of road accidents in Iaşi municipality. The study focuses on the exposed road sectors and on the main triggering factors: not granting priority to pedestrians and to other vehicles, pedestrians’ illegal crossing, excessive speeding and drunk driving