Safety at road junctions

Traffic accident is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. In Singapore, about 550 people were killed on the roads between 2011 and 2013. A significant portion of about 28.5 percent of the fatality accidents occurred at junctions. This study was undertaken to examine traffic safety at road junctions, specifically on those which had resulted in fatal accidents over the past three years. The research data was obtained from Singapore Traffic Police Department and information such as the types of junctions, types of vehicles involved, characteristics of the road users involved and reasons for the cause of accidents were extracted for analysis. From those data, the culpable and fatality groups were then identified, and their characteristics were also studied. Two main conclusive points have been derived from this research project. Firstly, it is noted that the top three most vulnerable groups of road users were motorcyclists, pedestrians and cyclists. There were a bigger proportion of accidents happened at signalised cross junctions, which suggests that more enforcement is required to be carried out to protect these three groups of road users. Secondly, results have indicated that the culpable vehicles on the road consist of motorcycles, cars and heavy goods vehicles. Most of them were male drivers and do not possess a clean driving history. Both findings have pointed out that motorcyclists were the most culpable yet vulnerable group of road users. This suggests that the number of traffic fatalities may reduce if most motorcyclists had traveled in a safer manner, as well as cars and heavy goods vehicles.Bachelor of Engineering (Civil