| Abstract: | Traffic accidents are frequently caused by complicated connection among people, vehicles, roads and the environment, and surely those accidents increase great expenditure on social cost; therefore, the “traveling security” becomes the most important issue that is obviously taking the place on the top priority of the traffic aspect. Because the geographic location and environmental distribution have been the attributes of traffic accidents, using geographic information system to build traffic accidents data will make the analysis even more complete. First of all, this research has used the geographic information system to build the database of traffic accidents happened in Taichung City, and next, through the interviews with the senior superiors of Taichung City’s Traffic Police Brigade and from their professional and experiential point of view, the discussion about the ten accident-prone road segments for situation factors and accident prevention strategies has been done. Furthermore, the knowledge map of traffic accidents in Taichung City has been built. Through pairing individual intersection with incident location and causes of incidents, the study of individual case has been done. And because of doing so, this study can be used to help the traffic management unit to do the best arrangement for traffic service and establishing the best prevention strategy. The major causes of the traffic accidents happened in Taichung City were mostly because of illegal overtaking, race for the road, lane change, or improper driving directions, drunk driving and not maintaining a safe distance. Furthermore, according to the Traffic Accident Prevention Strategy in Taichung City and the interview based on it, the result of analysis shows that the traffic accidents mostly can be divided into the categories of speeding, race for the road, changing lane at will, not following the traffic sign, traffic lanes and drunk driving. Therefore, the causes of traffic accidents are mainly personal factors, and most of the accidents happened especially at the intersections, places near the intersections, U-turn lanes, fast lanes and cross border areas. If the police and the city government can make a good use of geographic information system to analyze the major causes of accidents, keep banning violation of traffic rules and doing routine spot check, fulfill the education of traffic security for the citizens to help them cultivate the good habit of following traffic rules and regulations, the occurrence probability of traffic accidents will surely be effectively reduced. |
