Periodic analysis of traffic accidents occurring in Batman and factors contributing to accidents

For transportation, highways are one of the most widely used systems with a rate of approximately 90%. Every year, more than 1 million people die and 20-50 million people are injured or disabled in highway-based traffic accidents worldwide. Unfortunately, traffic accidents rank eighth on the list of causes of death worldwide. This situation shows that traffic accidents are a public health problem on a worldwide scale. In this study, an analysis of traffic accidents in Batman, one of the important cities of Turkey, was conducted. In this scope, assessments were made on a provincial basis covering a 10-year period based on data from traffic accidents that occurred between 2013 and 2022. There were 545 accidents in 2013, 647 accidents in 2022 and 5766 accidents in total in the 10-year period. Of these accidents, 74 were deadly, and 5,692 were recorded as accidents resulting in injury. The total number of deaths and injuries resulting from these accidents was 80 deaths and 9,786 injuries. In the temporal scale evaluations, it was observed that accidents continue at an increasing rate starting from the morning hours (07:00 08:00), reaching the peak at (18:00-19:00) and then starting to decline. In our city, where the most accidents happened in August in summer and the least accidents happened in February in winter, it was observed that most of the accidents happened during the daytime (63.82%) and in clear weather (90.18%). In spatial assessments, it is observed that 88.07% of the accident occurred in the settlement and that the accident rates are higher in the neighborhoods where the city center is dynamic. Kültür, Gültepe and Bahçelievler districts ranked in the top three as the districts where accidents occurred the most. In other hand, the highest accident rate occurred in areas with unknown locations such as city roads, highways etc., which are not specified. When the types of accidents were analyzed, it was determined that side collisions ranked first with a rate of 37.62%, followed by pedestrian collisions with a rate of 19.01% and then rear-end collisions with a rate of approximately 10%. In the evaluations made on the basis of road type and class, it was observed that 93.79% of the accidents occurred on divided and two-way roads, 51.82% on avenues, 29.92% on state roads and 13.58% on streets. In the forecasting analysis conducted on the number of accidents, total deaths, and injuries over the years, it has been determined that, assuming all conditions remain the same, the total number of accidents will increase by approximately 70%, the number of deaths by 150%, and the number of injuries by 30% in 2050 compared to 2022, with R2 values of 59%, 35%, and 10%, respectively. As a result, in this study conducted in Batman, it has been clearly evaluated that traffic accidents are an important problem in need of a solution.