Avaliação da segurança viária no trecho das rodovias RSC-287 e BR-287 no perímetro urbano de Santa Maria-RS

Abstract

In Brazil, highway modal is the most used for the transport of passengers and cargo in the country. As a result, a high volume of vehicles travels daily on the roads, and this excessive use leads to certain negative impacts in different aspects, among which traffic accidents stand out. The number of traffic accidents that occur annually on Brazilian highways is alarming, because, in addition to the loss of lives whose value is incalculable, they also cost billions of reais per year to society. In this sense, engineering, education and inspection actions become extremely important to reduce negative interference between users that generate conflicts and traffic accidents. In view of this, research and data collection is of the utmost importance for the improvement of road safety, in the search for strategies to prevent and reduce road accidents. In order to reduce or even avoid traffic accidents, it is necessary to know the characteristics that may be linked to their occurrence, to understand which factors have the greatest influence on the cause of accidents and to analyze aspects of critical locations, in order to outline well-planned and implemented mitigating measures. Therefore, this work aims to evaluate road safety in an urban road stretch of the city of Santa Maria, between kilometers 231 of RSC-287 and 253 of BR-287. For this, statistical, geospatial and on-site inspection analysis methodologies were used in a critical section, aiming to understand aspects related to the occurrence of accidents in this region. Statistical analysis allowed finding that most victims are young people, especially men, the vehicles most involved in accidents are cars and motorcycles, and the most frequent type of accident in the analyzed section is lateral collision. The geospatial analysis enabled the identification of critical points along the studied stretch. During the on-site visit, aspects of the road, vehicles and environment were observed, which may be influencing the higher occurrence of accidents in the section under analysis. From the results, some engineering measures were proposed that, combined with traffic education and inspection, can contribute to the improvement of road safety in the studied section.