Road safety on highways in urban areas

This paper aims to investigate road safety on highways in urban areas, by verifying the prevalence of the conditions of road elements and socioeconomic in urban areas where highways are inserted in the occurrence of seriously injured or fatal victims in traffic accidents. For this, Brazilian federal highways were segmented every ten kilometers and the victims was counted, from 2010 to 2014. In sixty-four most dangerous segments were verified the infrastructure conditions, using the "Pesquisa CNT de Rodovias" (CNT Survey of Highways). Solely 20,4% of these segments presented pavement, geometry and road signaling in appropriate conditions. A random sample of 118 stretches was made among those where there were victims. Classification of the urban centers and the general conditions of the highway were found, according to the criteria of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) and the National Confederation of Transport (CNT). A primary relation was found between the number of victims and stretches with regular road infrastructure conditions inserted in urban centers with greater area of influence and high Municipal Human Development Index (MHDI). Poor road sign, good geometry and regular pavement showed higher values of the Prevalence Ratio (PR), in the disaggregated analysis of road factors.