The Impact of Highway Design and Construction Practice Defect on the Safety of Nigeria Roads

ABSTRACT Safety on Nigeria roads has become a thing of concern in recent times. This is as a result of numerous carnages that have characterized with Nigeria roads. This loss of lives and properties have been attributed to many factors including poor road design and defective construction practice. A road that is poorly designed, is in no doubt a threat to the safety of the road users. In this paper, therefore the way in which highway design and construction practice impacts on the safety of Nigeria roads, was discussed. In doing that, efforts were made to look at the International Standard of highway design and construction practice, with the view of comparing them with the happenings in Nigeria. As a matter of fact, the road geometrical elements were discussed in detail. The Cross section elements such as (pavement width, formation width) site distance; horizontal and vertical alignment details; intersection elements; road furniture and factors that affect geometric design, were also discussed. For this study, some Nigerian roads within the area of study were investigated. The roads investigated were selected based on the Road Traffic Crash (RTC) gotten from the Federal road safety corps (FRSC). These roads selected are those that record high RTC. Also, along these routes, some places were identified as black spots, which are crash prone areas. Some of these routes and black spot were critically examined and findings were made. Pictures of some of the black spots were shown in this paper. Questionnaires and interviews were also employed in the course of this paper.