Infrastructural actions for the reduction of road accidents in urban settings

In the last decade, road accidents have caused in our country over 72,000 deaths and 2,400,000 injures; Italy, which in the seventies was one of four European countries with the highest indexes of road safety, nowadays has become a country with medium-low safety levels. It is therefore evident the need to intervene on the current mobility model, aiming to conditions of grater safety. This objective can be achieved by joint and coordinated action of several public and private subjects, which can create a cultural context, technical and organizational, for a more effective management of mobility. One of the peculiar characters in the Italian context consists in the high rate of urban accidents: in our cities, in the 2006, there were 182,177 accidents (76.5% on the total) which have caused 242,042 injures (equal to 72.7% on the total) and 2,494 deaths (44%). These values place our country in an anomalous situation in the UE panorama, in fact, the number of victims of road accidents in urban areas is significantly higher than the European average and this shows how the level of road safety in Italian cities is decidedly lacking. This study aims to develop a methodological approach that allows to measure accidents in urban areas, especially along the major roads of access to urban areas, in order to analyse the influence that the characteristics and forms of urban space, for example, the configuration of infrastructure, public spaces, the morphology of roads and the city, and the consequent use, have on the phenomena of danger. In order to identify appropriate intervention strategies for the improvement of safety standards through adequate planning and urban management. The research, in particular, analyzes the overall state of road in the city of Reggio Calabria, based on some project proposals for action on an area at high risk.