LTA: Accident black spots cut by 20%

The number of road accident "black spots" has fallen by 20 per cent in the past year or so, with 20 locations removed from the Land Transport Authority's (LTA's) blacklist.

This shows that measures implemented by LTA under its Black Spot Programme have proved successful.

According to Chinese daily Lianhe Zaobao, the 20 locations removed from the blacklist include the junction of Tampines Avenue 1 and 10, the junction of Lower Delta Road and Jalan Bukit Merah, as well as the junction intersecting Yishun avenues 2 and 5, and Yishun Central.

LTA introduced the Black Spot Programme in 2005, with the aim of identifying suitable engineering measures to make roads safer. These black spots refer to locations with a high incidence of traffic accidents. Once these spots are identified, LTA puts measures in place to improve safety on these roads.

Last year, LTA tightened the definition of what constitutes a black spot. Under its new guidelines, if more than 12 traffic accidents occur at the same location within three years, it is deemed a black spot.

Before April last year, it took 15 accidents for a location to be added to the blacklist.

After the new guidelines were implemented, the number of black spots increased to 100 from 90, but have since been reduced to 80.

LTA told Zaobao yesterday that a location can be taken off the list if traffic conditions improve and the number of accidents decreases significantly for three consecutive years.

Safety measures put in place by LTA include red-amber-green arrow lights to control the timing for right turns, resurfacing roads to make them less slippery and using speed-regulating strips to slow vehicles down.

Since its introduction, the Black Spot Programme has successfully "treated" and removed five to 10 locations every year from its list of black spots.

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