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Causes of Road Accidents with Fatalities and Heavy Injuries in Latvia

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Vision Zero for Sustainable Road Safety in Baltic Sea Region (VISZERO 2018)

Abstract

From all traffic accidents the accidents with fatalities and with heavy injuries are of the most concern of traffic safety authorities. Although a reasonable decline rate in road fatalities has been achieved, Latvia still is among the countries in European Union with the highest number of road deaths per number of inhabitants. Traffic safety research in Latvia for a range of years has been constrained by limited access to road accident documents by researchers due to legal reasons. The current research lead by Ministry of Transport coordinated researchers from State Police and State Forensic Science Bureau who had full access to road traffic accident documentation, Road Traffic Safety Directorate managing the statistics data, Latvian State Roads having expertise in road infrastructure safety assessment and Riga Technical University having skills in traffic safety research to analyze all road accidents with fatalities and heavy injuries in Riga region in 2016. Along with descriptive statistics data the research revealed the causes of the high percentage of vulnerable road users among the fatalities and heavily injured, problems with pedestrian crossings and other road infrastructure, certain road user behavioral problems and shortcomings in regular data collection for road traffic safety analysis. The findings will help to fulfill the goals of reducing the numbers of fatalities and heavily injured on roads and have clarified the course for future traffic safety research in Latvia.

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Acknowledgments

The research was financed by legislated deductions from the premiums of the compulsory civil liability insurance of the owners of motor vehicles. Special thanks are also to the staff of State Police, State Forensic Science Bureau and Road Traffic Safety Directorate who worked through the accident documents, Latvian State Roads who visited and analyzed every accident site and Ministry of Transport for coordinating the research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Riga Technical University, 1 Kalku Str., LV1658, Riga, Latvia

    Juris Kreicbergs & Oskars Irbitis

  2. Ministry of Transport, 3 Gogola Str., LV1743, Riga, Latvia

    Janis Kalnins

Authors
  1. Juris Kreicbergs
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  2. Oskars Irbitis
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  3. Janis Kalnins
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Juris Kreicbergs .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Technology and Society, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

    Andras Varhelyi

  2. Department of Automobile Engineering, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, Vilnius, Lithuania

    Vidas Žuraulis

  3. Department of Mobile Machinery and Railway Transport, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, Vilnius, Lithuania

    Olegas Prentkovskis

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Kreicbergs, J., Irbitis, O., Kalnins, J. (2020). Causes of Road Accidents with Fatalities and Heavy Injuries in Latvia. In: Varhelyi, A., Žuraulis, V., Prentkovskis, O. (eds) Vision Zero for Sustainable Road Safety in Baltic Sea Region. VISZERO 2018. Lecture Notes in Intelligent Transportation and Infrastructure. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22375-5_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22375-5_4

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-22374-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-22375-5

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

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