Identifying black spots on Kerala roads and highways

The Kerala government, on the direction of a Supreme Court committee on road safety, has identified 355 black spots in the state. As per the report prepared by National Transport Planning and Research Centre (NATPAC), 200 black spots are on national highways while 110 black spots are on state highways.

In district wise list, Ernakulam tops with 75 black spots. Malappuram follows with 71 black spots. Alappuzha, which earlier topped the list, is in third position with 57 black spots. The list was prepared based on secondary data provided by police stations in the state. As per the guidelines of Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MORTH), an accident black spot is a road stretch of about 500 meter in length in which either five road accidents (involving fatalities or grievous injuries) took place during last three calendar years or 10 fatalities took place during last three calendar years. According to NHAI, hazardous locations are evaluated based on Accidents Severity index (ASI). Hazardous spots with ASI more than threshold value (Average Severity + 1.5 x Standard Deviation) will be treated as black spots. For estimation of ASI, the weightage to fatal accidents will be assigned as seven and to grievous injury accident as three, based on NHAI criteria.