Krzysztof Płatkiewicz

Abstract It has been found that an increasing number of road accidents depends on an increasing number of vehicles, but this shouldn’t be seen as a rule. The likelihood of collisions and fatal accidents also increases in the unit zones where the density of the road network is higher. Functional factors resulting from the trading zones where many people work have a huge impact on the number effects and spatial distribution of the road accidents the city. The purpose of this article is to identify the directions of spatial distribution and determine the level of concentration of road accidents in Cracow. The author also aimed to discover how the functional factors affect the spatial distribution of road accidents in a big city. In this paper the database ZIKiT’s (The Management of Municipal Infrastructure and Transport in Krakow) was used. In the database date of traffic events is stored. This database contains 159 536 collisions and fatal accidents which occurred in Cracow in the years 1997-2010 according to 141 urban units. Fatal accidents are traffic events in which at least one person was injured. Other events were classified as collisions. The geocoding process and mapping calculations were carried out by means of ArcGIS10 software and are based on the administrative division of Cracow. A strong relationship has been found between the number of road accidents and the number of population and the number of people employed in total. Collisions show a little stronger correlation with the location where people work. The number of road accidents show a lower correlation with the density of the road network. As noted in other studies the number of road accidents increases in areas with a higher density of the road network. However, it turned out that the density of the road network in Cracow isn’t a primary factor in this matter, but it is important in case of victims, of personal injury accidents. The largest concentration of road accidents can be observed in areas with a lot of shops, department stores and big service centers. Large housing estates, where a lot of people live, are classified as the most dangerous places with respect to the absolute number of road accidents. The proportion of road accidents changed in Cracow in the last years. There is a reduction in their number in the city center and in large housing estates. The further the distance from the city center, the lower the number of road accidents. At the same time, the percentage of fatal accidents is bigger”. The number of the road accidents increases on the outskirts of the city.

Krzysztof Płatkiewicz

Articles