Abstract
Recently, a massive loss of life and property is occurring in Korea due to traffic accidents, with the rapid increase in cars. For improvement of traffic safety, the Korea Transportation Safety Authority intensively analyzes accident data in local governments with low traffic safety index, performs a field investigation to extract problems and offers local governments improvements for problems, by conducting the 'Special Survey of Actual Conditions of Traffic Safety' each year, starting 2008. But local governments cannot strongly push forward the improvement projects due to the limited budget and the uncertainty of the improvement plan effects. Therefore, this study suggested a model which applied the Utility concept to the AHP theory, in order to efficiently decide a priority of the improvement plans in accident black spots in consideration of the limited budget of local governments. The number of accidents in each spot for improvement and accident severity, traffic volume, pedestrian volume, the improvement project cost and the accident reduction effect were chosen as evaluation factors for deciding a priority, and data about the improvement plan costs and the accident reduction effects, traffic accidents and traffic volume in the spots to undergo the special research on the real condition of traffic accident in the past were collected from the existing studies. Then, regression analysis was carried out and the Utility Curve of each evaluation factor was computed. Based on the AHP analysis findings, this study devised a priority decision method which calculated the weight and the utility function of each evaluation factor and compared the total utility values. The AHP analysis findings showed that among the evaluation factors, accident severity had the biggest importance and it was followed by the improvement plan cost, the number of accidents, the improvement effect, traffic volume and pedestrian volume. The calculated utility function shows a rise in utility, as the variables of the 5 evaluation factors; the number of accidents, accident severity, the improvement plan effect, traffic volume and pedestrian volume increase and a fall in utility, as the variables of the improvement plan cost increase, since the improvement plan cost is included in the budget spent by a local government.
