ABSTRACT Road safety is a complicated issue.As the factor to accident is a systematic chain combined with human,vehicles and roads,any fault in this system Can result to accident.So it is not appropriate to ascribe any accident to some factor.Operating speed is a outcome of the road & traffic system and Can be used to appraise road safety conditions effectively. The research in this thesis includes two parts.In the first part,according to the observed operating speed,the relation between mad alignment and operating speed of freeway is investigated and a predictive model based on artificial neural network(ANN) is presented,then a flow chart is advanced to predict operating speed using the model.In the second part,the relation between operating speed and road safety condition is analyzed and thus a model is presented to appraise freeway safety condition with operating speed.The study also finds that operating speed,especially difference between adjacent road sections,has a significant effect to road section accident rate.The sections that have hiigh operating speed or hiigh speed difference tends to be accident black spot. Based on above model,safety appraisal and ameliorative flows are presented aim at highways and built projects SO as to systematically improve highway safety condition. Key words:operating speed,road safety,ANN,accident black spot |