1 Selection of Accident-Prone Locations and Their Accident Occurrence Conditions Before Measures
  We looked at locations where accidents were concentrated on main arteries throughout the country (national roads except expressways, main local roads, city and prefectural roads, and some city roads in designated cities), and selected specific accident-prone locations that had a particularly high degree of urgency, using as our judgment criterion "locations where at least one fatal accident would likely recur within 10 years." Nationwide, we selected 3,196 such locations (1,483 non-intersection locations and 1,713 intersection locations).
  At specific accident-prone locations, the number of accidents per unit interval is significantly larger than that of all main arteries (Figure 1).

Figure 1  Comparison of Average Number of Accidents per Year (1990-1993)

2 Implementation of Measures Program
  With the cooperation of road superintendents, public safety committees, and other agencies, we moved ahead with the program by conducting local surveys and formulating countermeasures for the specific accident-prone locations selected as described in Sec. 1. By 2001, measures for approximately 3,000 locations, representing 94% of the total, had been implemented.
  To understand what kind of measures had most frequently been implemented up to 2000, we tabulated the ten most frequently implemented measures for non-intersection locations and intersection locations. The results are shown in Table 1.

Table 1  Main Measures Implemented for Accident-Prone Locations

  As measures for non-intersection locations, road lighting, traffic directional markers, and other nighttime visibility aids were installed at many locations, as well as road surface markings, lane edge and road shoulder lines, warning signs, and other attention-getting measures. As measures for intersection locations, road lighting was installed at many locations and traffic flow was improved through measures such as road surface markings (words, marks, arrows, etc.), right-turn lanes, and traffic light pattern improvement.
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Institute for Traffic Accident Research and Data Analysis (ITARDA)