Road traffic accident is a serious problem causing Thai citizen deaths about 10,000 people annually, as shown in Figure 1, (Royal Thai Police, 2013). In addition, Thai road was ranked no. 3 for traffic death rate per 100,000 populations (WHO, 2013).
Various concerned authorities have put their efforts to find the causes of traffic accidents and solve this problem by developing road accident databases, for example, police database, called POLIS, developed by Royal Thai Police (RTP), Highway Accident Information Management System (HAIMS) developed by Department of Highways (DOH), Emergency Medical Service (EMS) database developed by Ministry of Public Health (MOPH), and Thai Road Safety Collaboration (ThaiRSC) database developed by Road Accident Victims Protection Company Limited (RVP). However, the developed databases, have been used separately for different purposes and lack of an integration, as shown in Figure 2.
Recently, the Road Accident Victims Protection Company Limited (RVP) has developed the road accident database called ThaiRSC. The accident data are collected from the road victims, who claim for compulsory insurance, in all provinces. As a result, the database covers most road accidents in Thailand. As a part of database application, the road accident map has been developed. As shown in Figure 3, the map can present the location of different road accident severities. The users can investigate the hazardous or high risk locations from the map. However, there is still a gap in realizing the details of accident location for road users and reporting related data of the accidents from road users.
In developed countries, several road accident databases and safety maps (or called risk maps) have been developed and widely used As shown in Figure 4, the maps make the user easy to identify the most dangerous or safest locations (road sections or junctions) within a specific area.
From the literature, most of the safety maps present the locations where people are being killed, seriously or slightly injured. Distinctly, the safety map developed by Honda collects sudden braking information from Inter-Navi system in Honda cars running over Japan, and traffic accident information from all road users (drivers, riders, and pedestrians). This safety map has been developed from the voice of everyone in the hope and look forward to the world that everyone can live in peace more (www.honda.co.jp/safetymap).
Although many organizations have been paid attention on road accident management, road accidents for road user seems to be just a common issue. Road users and the society in general have paid less attention on this problem, so less effort and resource have been allocated to protect and manage the incidents. An assumption is that to increase attention or awareness of individuals, each individual should have perceived that road accident is a high risk for himself/herself, his/her family, and the society. If so, with no enforcement their behaviour would change to be a safety culture. Thus the key issue is how to raise personal awareness that road accident is a high risk and severity for oneself. Road safety map which shows traffic accident information could be a tool for turning road users to be aware of accidents around themselves, and reporting to organizations that have responsible to solve the problems.
This research aims to develop interactive road safety map that
allow everyone to easily access and perceive incident information, for example, use for daily travel or national holidays (New year, Songkran festival);
allow concerned authorities to employ collected information to solve and prevent road traffic accident, for example, identification of black spot locations, implementation of road safety audit; and
can be further developed by integrating previous ATRANS research tools, for example, driving styles evaluation using smartphones.
The objectives of this research are as follows:
To review existing sources of road safety maps in Thailand and other countries;
To develop reliable interactive road safety map;
To push the road safety map into practice in Thailand.
By implementing the road safety map in Thailand, the researchers expects that individuals and Thai society could realize the risk of traffic accident and raise their awareness on traffic safety.