Published Paper Details:

Rapid urbanization has dramatically increased vehicle usage and accidents in cities across India, especially in urbanizing regions like Visakhapatnam. The absence of comprehensive safety assessments and infrastructure development has resulted in many locations that are susceptible to accidents. This study aims to develop a practical procedure for performing RSAs on urban roads, taking Visakhapatnam as a case study. The methodology consists of choosing primary urban corridors with the highest number of accidents, severity indices, and traffic volume from the dataset from 2020 to 2023. A comprehensive four-stage RSA process was implemented, indicating that these five zones were classified as high-risk zones with calculated hazard indices ranging from 3.2 to 7.8. Following the audit-focused interventions of adding better signs, designated pedestrian crossing areas, median barriers, and improvement of road surfaces in two pilot zones, post-analysis results indicated a 28.7% reduction in accidents and a 35.4% decline in severity-weighted measures of accidents. Regression-based predictive analysis confirmed the outcomes with 91.2% accuracy in comparison to historical accident data. The results confirmed that urban-focused RSAs improve road safety significantly. The suggested. The proposed model for Visakhapatnam offers a scalable and replicable framework for other Indian cities aiming to integrate safety audits into urban transportation planning and design processes.