Discover Spatiotemporal Association and Causation between Potholes and Flat Tire Frequency
Publication: Journal of Infrastructure Systems
Volume 30, Issue 4
Abstract
This study attempts to untangle the association and causation between pavement potholes and vehicle flat tire frequency. To this end, the study collected pothole data from crowdsourced user-generated reports and extracted flat tire incidents from official operation notes. To account for spatiotemporal variations in potholes and flat tire incidents, a geographically and temporally weighted negative binomial regression (GTWNBR) model was created to explore their spatiotemporal association, alongside a negative binomial fixed-effects regression model (NBFER) for causal inference of flat tire incidents. The GTWNBR model revealed that potholes are positively correlated with flat tire frequency, with a significant spatiotemporal variation. The potholes in the central city and interchanges of highways were found to have a higher association with flat tire frequency than in other areas. Besides, the flat tire frequency was most strongly correlated with potholes that outbreak during the winter months. Further, the NBFER model substantiated that increments in potholes can significantly cause more flat tire incidents. The NBFER and GTWNBR models differ in their strengths: the NBFER model is better suited for making causal inferences, whereas the GTWNBR model can provide a more comprehensive understanding of covariates and achieve higher predictive performance. The study findings recognize tangible connections of how pavement conditions trigger flat tire incidents, and they can pave the way toward prioritizing infrastructural investment decisions related to roadway maintenance.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Data Availability Statement
All data, models, or codes that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
References
Abatzoglou, J. T. 2013. “Development of gridded surface meteorological data for ecological applications and modelling.” Int. J. Climatol. 33 (1): 121–131. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.3413.
Al-Masaeid, H. R. 1997. “Impact of pavement condition on rural road accidents.” Can. J. Civ. Eng. 24 (4): 523–531. https://doi.org/10.1139/l97-009.
Anastasopoulos, P. C., and F. L. Mannering. 2009. “A note on modeling vehicle accident frequencies with random-parameters count models.” Accid. Anal. Prev. 41 (1): 153–159. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2008.10.005.
Ann Myers, L., R. Roque, B. E. Ruth, and C. Drakos. 1999. “Measurement of contact stresses for different truck tire types to evaluate their influence on near-surface cracking and rutting.” Transp. Res. Rec. 1655 (1): 175–184. https://doi.org/10.3141/1655-23.
Arvin, R., M. Kamrani, and A. J. Khattak. 2019. “How instantaneous driving behavior contributes to crashes at intersections: Extracting useful information from connected vehicle message data.” Accid. Anal. Prev. 127 (Mar): 118–133. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2019.01.014.
Brewer, M. J., A. Butler, and S. L. Cooksley. 2016. “The relative performance of aic, aicc and bic in the presence of unobserved heterogeneity.” Methods Ecol. Evol. 7 (6): 679–692. https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.12541.
Cameron, A. C., and F. A. Windmeijer. 1996. “R-squared measures for count data regression models with applications to health-care utilization.” J. Bus. Econ. Stat. 14 (2): 209–220. https://doi.org/10.1080/07350015.1996.10524648.
Cavanaugh, J. E. 1997. “Unifying the derivations for the Akaike and corrected Akaike information criteria.” Stat. Probab. Lett. 33 (2): 201–208. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0167-7152(96)00128-9.
David, D., S. S. Ahmed, M. T. Sarwar, G. Fountas, and P. Anastasopoulos. 2023. “An in-depth econometric analysis of pavement performance and service life by pavement rehabilitation treatment type and delivery method.” J. Infrastruct. Syst. 29 (4): 04023024. https://doi.org/10.1061/JITSE4.ISENG-2203.
Farmer, C. M. 2017. “Relationship of traffic fatality rates to maximum state speed limits.” Traffic Inj. Prev. 18 (4): 375–380. https://doi.org/10.1080/15389588.2016.1213821.
Glass, G. V. 1968. “Analysis of data on the connecticut speeding crackdown as a time-series quasi-experiment.” Law Soc. Rev. 3 (1): 55–76. https://doi.org/10.2307/3052795.
Gu, Y., D. Liu, R. Arvin, A. J. Khattak, and L. D. Han. 2023. “Predicting intersection crash frequency using connected vehicle data: A framework for geographical random forest.” Accid. Anal. Prev. 179 (Jun): 106880. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2022.106880.
Gu, Y., Y. Liu, D. Liu, L. D. Han, and X. Jia. 2024a. “Spatiotemporal kernel density clustering for wide area near real-time pothole detection.” Adv. Eng. Inf. 60 (Mar): 102351. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aei.2023.102351.
Gu, Y., H. Zhang, C. Brakewood, and L. D. Han. 2022. Waze data reporting. Washington, DC: USDOT.
Gu, Y., H. Zhang, L. D. Han, and A. Khattak. 2024b. “Modeling spatiotemporal heterogeneity in interval-censored traffic incident time to normal flow by leveraging crowdsourced data: A geographically and temporally weighted proportional hazard analysis.” Accid. Anal. Prev. 195 (Mar): 107406. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2023.107406.
Hausman, J. A., B. H. Hall, and Z. Griliches. 1984. Econometric models for count data with an application to the patents-R&D relationship. Reston, VA: ASCE. https://doi.org/10.3386/t0017.
Hong, J., R. Tamakloe, and D. Park. 2019. “A comprehensive analysis of multi-vehicle crashes on expressways: A double hurdle approach.” Sustainability 11 (10): 2782. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11102782.
Hoseinzadeh, N., Y. Gu, L. D. Han, C. Brakewood, and P. B. Freeze. 2021. “Estimating freeway level-of-service using crowdsourced data.” Informatics 8 (11): 17. https://doi.org/10.3390/informatics8010017.
Hoseinzadeh, N., Y. Liu, L. D. Han, C. Brakewood, and A. Mohammadnazar. 2020. “Quality of location-based crowdsourced speed data on surface streets: A case study of waze and bluetooth speed data in Sevierville, TN.” Comput. Environ. Urban Syst. 83 (Sep): 101518. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2020.101518.
Huang, B., B. Wu, and M. Barry. 2010. “Geographically and temporally weighted regression for modeling spatio-temporal variation in house prices.” Int. J. Geogr. Inf. Sci. 24 (3): 383–401. https://doi.org/10.1080/13658810802672469.
Imbens, G. W., and D. B. Rubin. 2015. Causal inference in statistics, social, and biomedical sciences. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Kaplan, S., and C. G. Prato. 2007. “Impact of bac limit reduction on different population segments: A poisson fixed effect analysis.” Accid. Anal. Prev. 39 (6): 1146–1154. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2007.02.013.
Koch, C., and I. Brilakis. 2011. “Pothole detection in asphalt pavement images.” Adv. Eng. Inf. 25 (3): 507–515. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aei.2011.01.002.
Kyriakou, C., S. E. Christodoulou, and L. Dimitriou. 2019. “Smartphone-based pothole detection utilizing artificial neural networks.” J. Infrastruct. Syst. 25 (3): 04019019. https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)IS.1943-555X.0000489.
Lee, J., B. Nam, and M. Abdel-Aty. 2015. “Effects of pavement surface conditions on traffic crash severity.” J. Transp. Eng. 141 (10): 04015020. https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)TE.1943-5436.0000785.
Li, H., D. J. Graham, and A. Majumdar. 2012. “The effects of congestion charging on road traffic casualties: A causal analysis using difference-in-difference estimation.” Accid. Anal. Prev. 49 (Mar): 366–377. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2012.02.013.
Li, X., B. Dadashova, S. Yu, and Z. Zhang. 2020. “Rethinking highway safety analysis by leveraging crowdsourced waze data.” Sustainability 12 (23): 10127. https://doi.org/10.3390/su122310127.
Li, Z., W. Wang, P. Liu, J. M. Bigham, and D. R. Ragland. 2013. “Using geographically weighted poisson regression for county-level crash modeling in California.” Saf. Sci. 58 (Mar): 89–97. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2013.04.005.
Liu, J., A. Hainen, X. Li, Q. Nie, and S. Nambisan. 2019. “Pedestrian injury severity in motor vehicle crashes: An integrated spatio-temporal modeling approach.” Accid. Anal. Prev. 132 (Mar): 105272. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2019.105272.
Liu, Y., N. Hoseinzadeh, Y. Gu, L. D. Han, C. Brakewood, and Z. Zhang. 2023. “Evaluating the coverage and spatiotemporal accuracy of crowdsourced reports over time: A case study of waze event reports in Tennessee.” Transp. Res. Rec. 2678 (4): 468–481. https://doi.org/10.1177/03611981231185144.
Liu, Y., Z. Zhang, L. D. Han, and C. Brakewood. 2021. “Automatic traffic queue-end identification using location-based waze user reports.” Transp. Res. Rec. 2675 (10): 895–906. https://doi.org/10.1177/03611981211013353.
Ma, X., J. Zhang, C. Ding, and Y. Wang. 2018. “A geographically and temporally weighted regression model to explore the spatiotemporal influence of built environment on transit ridership.” Comput. Environ. Urban Syst. 70 (Mar): 113–124. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2018.03.001.
Miaou, S.-P., P. S. Hu, T. Wright, A. K. Rathi, and S. C. Davis. 1992. “Relationship between truck accidents and highway geometric design: A poisson regression approach.” Transp. Res. Rec. 1376. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118445112.stat06593.
Miles, J. 2014. Tolerance and variance inflation factor. New York: Wiley.
Morgan, S. L. 2013. Handbook of causal analysis for social research. New York: Springer.
Oppewal, H. 2010. Concept of causality and conditions for causality. New York: Wiley.
Rosenbaum, P. R. 2005. “Heterogeneity and causality: Unit heterogeneity and design sensitivity in observational studies.” Am. Stat. 59 (2): 147–152. https://doi.org/10.1198/000313005X42831.
Saeed, T. U., T. Hall, H. Baroud, and M. J. Volovski. 2019. “Analyzing road crash frequencies with uncorrelated and correlated random-parameters count models: An empirical assessment of multilane highways.” Anal. Methods Accid. Res. 23 (Mar): 100101. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amar.2019.100101.
Venkataraman, N. S., G. F. Ulfarsson, V. Shankar, J. Oh, and M. Park. 2011. “Model of relationship between interstate crash occurrence and geometrics: Exploratory insights from random parameter negative binomial approach.” Transp. Res. Rec. 2236 (1): 41–48. https://doi.org/10.3141/2236-05.
Wagenaar, A. C., D. M. Murray, and T. L. Toomey. 2000. “Communities mobilizing for change on alcohol (CMCA): Effects of a randomized trial on arrests and traffic crashes.” Addiction 95 (2): 209–217. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1360-0443.2000.9522097.x.
Wang, W., S. Qiu, S. Wang, P. Wang, and J. Zhang. 2018. “Investigation of seasonal variations of Beijing pavement condition data using unevenly spaced dynamic panel data model.” Int. J. Pavement Eng. 19 (9): 851–856. https://doi.org/10.1080/10298436.2016.1213590.
Xu, P., and H. Huang. 2015. “Modeling crash spatial heterogeneity: Random parameter versus geographically weighting.” Anal. Methods Accid. Res. 75 (Mar): 16–25. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2014.10.020.
Yaacob, W. F. W., M. A. Lazim, and Y. B. Wah. 2011. “Applying fixed effects panel count model to examine.” J. Appl. Sci. 11 (7): 1185–1191. https://doi.org/10.3923/jas.2011.1185.1191.
Yang, C., Y. Tsai, and Z. Wang. 2009. “Algorithm for spatial clustering of pavement segments.” Comput.-Aided Civ. Infrastruct. Eng. 24 (2): 93–108. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8667.2008.00573.x.
Yu, X., and E. Salari. 2011. “Pavement pothole detection and severity measurement using laser imaging.” In Proc., 2011 IEEE Int. Conf. on Electro/Information Technology, 1–5. New York: IEEE.
Zeng, H., M. D. Fontaine, and B. L. Smith. 2014. “Estimation of the safety effect of pavement condition on rural, two-lane highways.” Transp. Res. Rec. 2435 (1): 45–52. https://doi.org/10.3141/2435-06.
Zhang, H., Y. Gu, R. Huang, and L. D. Han. 2022. Quantify freeway safety service patrol and protect the queue impact on transportation network reliability. Washington, DC: USDOT.
Zhang, Z., J. Liu, X. Li, X. Fu, C. Yang, and S. Jones. 2023. “Localizing safety performance functions for two-way stop-controlled (twst) three-leg intersections on rural two-lane two-way (tltw) roadways in alabama: A geospatial modeling approach with clustering analysis.” Accid. Anal. Prev. 179 (Jun): 106896. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2022.106896.
Zhang, Z., Y. Liu, L. D. Han, and P. B. Freeze. 2021. “Secondary crash identification using crowdsourced waze user reports.” Transp. Res. Rec. 2675 (10): 853–862. https://doi.org/10.1177/03611981211013040.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Copyright
© 2024 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Aug 19, 2023
Accepted: May 22, 2024
Published online: Jul 19, 2024
Published in print: Dec 1, 2024
Discussion open until: Dec 19, 2024
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Accidents
- Analysis (by type)
- Business management
- Data collection
- Engineering fundamentals
- Gravels
- Highway and road management
- Highway transportation
- Highways and roads
- Infrastructure
- Interchanges
- Methodology (by type)
- Pavement condition
- Pavement surface roughness
- Pavements
- Practice and Profession
- Public administration
- Public health and safety
- Regression analysis
- Research methods (by type)
- Statistical analysis (by type)
- Traffic accidents
- Traffic engineering
- Traffic management
- Transportation engineering
- Vehicle-pavement interaction
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.