Analysis of accidents in sections of Spanish road works and the importance of making the signs on them credible

Among the activities carried out by the Working Group in Security Works, that belongs to The Road Safety Technical Committee of the Technical Association of the Road (ATC), is an analysis of traffic accidents with casualties that have occurred in work zones of the entire Spanish road network in the period 2000 to 2007. The analysis is based on available data regarding the number of injury accidents and also in terms of the number of deaths. This document itself focuses especially on the most relevant results on the characterization of the accidents at work zones: the day of the week and the type of accident. The second section examines the importance of the marking of road works, suggesting that this is one of the key elements for safety. In this regard, what is important is that the signaling is correct, as it is then meaningful to users. Finally some conclusions are presented, among which highlights that the severity of traffic accidents on sections of road works is significantly higher than that of accidents on the rest of the network. On the other hand, it appears that the accident rate remains relatively stable throughout the week, including Saturdays and Sundays. This does not happen on average in the whole network, which has fewer accidents on weekends. Finally, the authors find that the most common type of accident also differs from the average results, as in sections of road works, while the average for the whole network is out of the way.