Accidents Analysis of Kandahar-Spin Buldak Highway in Afghanistan

The study aims to identify and prioritize the accidental blackspots locations on Kandahar – Spin Buldak highway located in Afghanistan. The hazardous locations (blackspots) are identified by the APW (Accident Point Weightage), EPDO (Equivalent Property Damage Only), and RQC (Rate Quality Control) methods. In the first step;APW and EPDO methods identified Km 7 , Km 20, Km 47, Km 62 and Km 90 as blackspot locations on Kandahar – Spin Buldak highway, however, integrating all three methods (RQC, APW and EPDO); the Km 7and Km 20 are recognized as critical hazardous locations alongside this highway. While practically and theoretically high number of crashes occur in locations where there is higher AADT,surprisingly, this paper found critical blackspots locations alongside Km 7 and Km 20 segments of the highway(havingalmost equal and less AADT in comparisonwith 47, 62 and 90 Km). Keywords— Blackspot, EPDO method, APW method, Rate Quality Control method and Crashes.


I. INTRODUCTION
Afghanistan is one of the developing countries havinghigh level of traffic accidents. Increase in the number of vehicles on the roads results high accident rates. Hence, comprehensive studies are required to take placein order to address problems and propose solutions for the accident rates that caus e not only health loss but also social and economic loss in developing Afghanistan. The total number of accidents in Afghanistan were 4,397 in 2014, in which 6,448 were fatalities . The age adjusted death rate is 21 per 100,000 of population ranked 23 rd in the world (WHO, 2014;CSO, 2015). Rapid economical and industrial rise all over the country directly contributes to higher number of individual car ownerships. which leads increasing accidents frequency and severity as shown in " Fig. 1"(MTCA AFGHANSITAN, 2017). year. The average world fatality rate per 10,000 vehicles is 19 and is 2 per 10,000 vehicles in developed countries (Aung S. N., 2014). Whereas, the fatality rate in Afghanistan is above 30 per 10,000 vehicles for the past five years (from 2010-2014) (WHO, 2015). Kandahar is the second biggest province of Afghanistan and its Spin Buldak district is the second major entry between Afghanistan and Pakistan which named Wesh -Chaman border crossing. It is also a major transporting and receiving site between the two neighboring countries. Kandahar to Spin Buldak is one of highways of Kandahar province which connects Wesh-Chaman border to the city of Kandahar province. Many people always cross and go through this highway by land transport in terms of cars, vans, and buses. Its design speed is 90 Kilo meters per hour and its reconstruction work was started in 2008 and ended on 2010.The pavement width is 25 ft. and with 6 ft. of shoulders. In this route, there are many accidents taking place recently because of many people use this highway for many purposes such as business, offices work, diplomacy and leisure time. There are 347 vehicles crashes with 311 fatalities and 784 injuries from November 2012 to December 2015(KMRH, 2015).The reasons behind these accidents rates are inadequate capacity of roads, speeds and human errors.

II. STUDY AREA
Kandahar -Spin Buldak highway is located in the East of Kandahar city. It is one of the main highways of Kandahar province which links Wish Chaman border to the city of Kandahar. Many people always cross and go through this highway by land transport in terms of cars, vans, and buses. In the other hand, it is the core highway between the southern of Afghanistan and the topography is generally plain and rolling surface but some parts are also mountainous region.5 years accident data (2012-2016)has beenused for this highway and theconsideredtotal length of the study area is about 105 Kilometers along this highwayas shown below.

III. METHODOLOGY
The study is conducted in two parts:  To identification and analysis of accidental blackspots through EPDO, APW and Rate Quality control methods.  To Prioritize the blackspots through comparison of EPDO, APW and Rate Quality Control methods

Data Collection
Related accident data collected from highway department, traffic police department, Kandahar Mirwais Regional Hospital, WHO, UN-Habitat and international organizations. Fig.3.1shows the number of accidents and fatalities over the past four years.

Methodol ogy for blackspots Analysis
In this study, three methods have been used to identify and prioritize the blackspot locations namely accident point weightage method (APW), equivalent property damage only method (EPDO) and Rate Quality control methods.

1 Accident Point Weightage (APW) Method
Identification and prioritization of blackspots location were carried out by using ranking accident point weightage method. In this method, the accidents were divided into three groups. For property damage only it was multiplied with 0.2 while multiply with 3.0 and 6.0 injury and fatality respectively.

APW = KF + KI + KP
(1) Where, W = Coefficient of Weight F = Fatality Frequency I = Injury Frequency P = PDO Frequency K values for Fatality is 6, Injury is 3 and PDO is 0.2

Equivalent Property Damage Only (EPDO) Method
Another method which has been used to identify the blackspots location was equivalent property damage only me thod (EPDO). In this method considered weights of an accident is based on its severity of accident. The weight of fatality is higher than injury and vehicle damage only. The severity index is calculated based on using the equation of Campbell and Knapp (Campbell, 2005).The following mentioned procedure have been used for EPDO method. The EPDO Severity is mentioned by equation: The exposure per day times days is called and the exposure rate that is the total days during the analysis period which is equal to 1,460 days (365*4).

Rate Quality Control (RQC) Method
The rate quality control method is used in the hazardous locations which comparesthe traffic crashes rates for roadway segments with similar characteristics to determine the critical and average crashes rate for all specified locations of road. The formula to find the critical crash rate at highway is follows: A section j is considered to be a blackspot, from the accident rate point of view, if:

Result by comparison of EPDO, APW and Rate Quality Control methods
By EPDO and APW methods five common from ten locations were included in blackspots but in Rate Quality control method only Km 7 th and Km 20 th were included. In EPDO and APW method the main considered factors were fatality, Injury and property damage but in Rate quality method the main factors which considered were number of accidents on specific section, period of time and entering of vehicle number to a specific section and the same specific time of period.

V. CONCLUSION
This study identifies the high crashes locations on the Kandahar -Spin Buldak highway in Afghanistan. High crash locations can be defined as any highway location which has a higher frequency of crashes compared to other roadway locations. The identification of road sections characterized by high risk accidents is the first step for any successful road safety management. In this study, the hazardous locations (blackspots) are identified by the APW (Accident Point Weightage), EPDO (Equivalent Property Damage Only), and RQC (Rate Quality Control) methods. In the first step; APW and EPDO methods identified Km 7 th , Km 20th, Km 47 th , Km 62 nd and Km 90 th as blackspot locations on Kandahar -Spin Buldak highway, however, integrating all three methods (RQC, APW and EPDO); the Km 7 th and Km 20 th are recognized as critical hazardous locations alongside this highway. While practically and theoretically high number of crashes occur in locations where there is higher AADTs, surprisingly, this paper found critical blackspots locations alongside Km 7th and Km 20th segments of the highway (having almost equal and less AADT in comparison with 47th, 62nd and 90th Km). The total number occurred crashesalong highway were 347 cases with 412 vehicles damages only, 784 injuries and 311 fatalities. The feature of accident cases was increasing except year 2015 due to applied government