Making Accident Data Compatible With Its-Based Traffic Management: Turkish Case

Abstract

One of the most important reasons of the high rate of accidents would largely lend itself to ineffective data collection and evaluation process since the necessary information cannot be obtained effectively from the traffic accidents reports (TAR). The discord and dealing with non-relevant data may appear at four levels: (1) Country and Cultural, (2) Institutional and organizational, (3) Data collection, (4) Data analysis and Evaluation. The case findings are consistent with this knowledge put forward in the literature; there is a transparency problem in coordination between the institutions as well as the inefficient TAR data, which is open to manipulation; the problem of under-reporting and inappropriate data storage prevails before the false statistical evaluation methods. The old-fashioned data management structure causes incompatibility with the novel technologies, avoiding timely interventions in reducing accidents and alleviating the fatalities. Transmission of the data to the interest agencies for evaluation and effective operation of the ITS-based systems should be considered. The problem areas were explored through diagnoses at institutional, data collection, and evaluation steps and the solutions were determined accordingly for the case city of Izmir.