Gathering Road Safety Critical Information From Users

Gathering Road Safety Critical Information From Users

Ahmet Yıldız
Copyright: © 2017 |Pages: 16
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-5225-2446-5.ch012
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Abstract

Traffic roads are a core element of GIS and many volunteered systems like openstreetmaps have the goal to make road data publicly available. Road users collecting geographical information and sharing them according some rules are a great opportunity to make our roads a safer place. Traffic accidents are a major cause of death and with increase in urbanization and motorization the risk is expected to rise higher. Research regarding road safety is mostly reactive; sections of the road where a lot of accidents has already happened are investigated and possibly causes are identified and then improved. This means, that people have to die in order to make those road sections safe. The system described in this chapter is a proactive method and can be operated by the community or some responsible authority. The gathered data is also very useful for different research areas like social sciences or civil engineering.
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Background On Road Traffic Safety

Traffic is the movement of humans or goods, either by vehicle or on foot. Humans always strived for mobility, while the means of moving changed over time and advanced with the technological progress. The first roads would be the worn out paths, simply being created by frequent passage. With the invention of non-motorized carriages pulled by animals, more sophisticated roads were built to enable the wheels run smoothly. With growing vehicles which also became faster, safety on the road became an issue. Rules were set in order to prevent accidents and in case of an accident, to be able to determine the guilty ones.

Today, one distinguishes between traffic in the air, on the water and on the ground. While each have their safety issues, this chapter concentrates on traffic on the ground. With motorization of the vehicles and the increasing number of vehicles in traffic, the safety issue is more eminent than ever. According to the World Health Organization (2015, p. 2 ff), traffic accidents are among the top ranking causes of death, and in some countries even the number one cause of death.

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