Prioritization and Identification of Accident Black Spots and Analyzing Road Traffic Accidents in the Amhara Region: A Case Study from Dembecha to the Injibara Highway Segment

Abstract Millions of people die in road accidents annually, causing significant damage to the economy and humanity. Even if severe road traffic accidents are a major health concern worldwide, unlike in developed or high-income countries, very little progress has been made in addressing this problem in many developing countries. Ethiopia is one of the developing countries with the worst road traffic accident records in the world, and it ranks second among East African countries. Nonetheless, there are ways to strengthen the reduction of injured persons that will help to lower the toll from severe RTAs. The main focus of the study is to analyze road accidents through black spot prioritization and identification as well as to analyze road traffic accidents on the Dembecha-Injibara (99 km) highway segment. The selected sites for the present study included around Dembecha, Dembecha, Around Finote Selam, Finote Selam city, Burie, Guagusa Shikudad, Banja and Injibara city. This research was established mainly through descriptive and inferential analysis. Inferential analysis was carried out using the quality control method (Zegeer: 1982) for accident rate calculations, critical accident rates were calculated by using the Poisson distribution analysis method, and the results were generated. Furthermore, the analysis of the prioritization of accident black spots was carried out by considering the weight of factors that lead to road traffic accidents and the weight of road traffic accident severity types. Accordingly, black spot location and priority value analyses were performed. Therefore, out of the 8 sections of the subject road, Finote Selam, Banja and Burie were highly prone to accidents, and the corresponding accident frequency values were 94, 78 and 69, respectively, while the total accident factor weightage values were 34, 37 and 31, respectively. Moreover, the priority values of Burie, around Finote Selam and Banja are 27.22, 21.57 and 20.57, respectively. As a result, Burie Road was found to be the prime accident-prone location, followed by the location around the Finote Selam and Banja road segments. Based on the findings, recommendations and suggestions were provided on how to reduce the severity of traffic accidents in the study area.