Relationships Among Urban Freeway Accidents, Traffic Flow, Weather, and Lighting Conditions
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 129, Issue 4
Abstract
Linear and nonlinear multivariate statistical analyses are applied to determine how the types of accidents that occur on heavily used freeways in Southern California are related both to the flow of traffic and to weather and ambient lighting conditions. Traffic flow is measured in terms of time series of 30-s observations from inductive loop detectors in the vicinity of the accident prior to the time of its occurrence. Results indicate that the type of collision is strongly related to median traffic speed and to temporal variations in speed in the left and interior lanes. Hit-object collisions and collisions involving multiple vehicles that are associated with lane-change maneuvers are more likely to occur on wet roads, while rear-end collisions are more likely to occur on dry roads during daylight. Controlling for weather and lighting conditions, there is evidence that accident severity is influenced more by volume than by speed.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
References
Aljanahi, A. A. M., Rhodes, A. H., and Metcalfe, A. V.(1999). “Speed, speed limits and road traffic accidents under free flow conditions.” Accid. Anal Prev., 31(1–2), 161–168.
CALTRANS. (1993). Manual of traffic accident surveillance and analysis system, California Department of Transportation, Sacramento, Calif.
Cedar, A., and Livneh, L.(1982). “Relationship between road accidents and hourly traffic flow.” Accid. Anal Prev., 14(1), 19–44.
Dickerson, A., Peirson, J., and Vickerman, R.(2000). “Road accidents and traffic flows: An econometric investigation.” Economica, 67(265), 101–121.
Frantzeskakis, J. M., and Iordanis, D. I.(1987). “Volume-to-capacity ratio and traffic accidents on interurban four-lane highways in Greece.” Transp. Res. Rec., 1112, 29–38.
Fridstrøm, L., Ifver, J., Ingebrigtsen, S., Kulmala, R., and Thomsen, L. K.(1995). “Measuring the contribution of randomness, exposure, weather, and daylight to the variation in road accident counts.” Accid. Anal Prev., 27(1), 1–20.
Garber, N. J., and Gadiraju, R.(1990). “Factors influencing speed variance and its influence on accidents.” Transp. Res. Rec., 1213, 64–71.
Gifi, A. (1990). Nonlinear multivariate analysis, Wiley, Chichester, England.
Gwynn, D. W.(1967). “Relationship of accident rates and accident involvement with hourly volumes.” Traffic Q., 21(3), 407–418.
Hall, J. W., and Pendleton, O. J. (1989). “Relationship between V/C ratios and accident rates.” Rep. FHWA-HPR-NM-88-02, U.S. Dept. of Transportation, Washington, D.C.
Israëls, Z. (1987). Eigenvalue techniques for qualitative DATA, DSWO Press, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Jansson, J. O.(1994). “Accident externality charges.” J. Transp. Econ. Policy, 28(1), 31–43.
Johansson, P.(1996). “Speed limitation and motorway casualties: A time series count data regression approach.” Accid. Anal Prev., 28(1), 73–87.
Jones-Lee, M. W.(1990). “The value of transport safety.” Oxford Rev. Econ. Poli., 6(1), 39–60.
Mensah, A., and Hauer, E.(1998). “Two problems of averaging arising from the estimation of the relationship between accidents and traffic flow.” Transp. Res. Rec., 1635, 37–43.
Michailidis, G., and de Leeuw, J.(1998). “The GIFI system of descriptive multivariate analysis.” Stat. Sci., 13(4), 307–336.
Newberry, D.(1988). “Road user charges in Britain.” Econom. J., 98, 161–176.
O’Reilly, D., Hopkin, J., Loomes, G., Jones-Lee, M., Philips, P., McMa-hon, K., Ives, D., Sobey, B., Ball, D., and Kemp, R.(1994). “The value of road safety: UK research on the valuation of preventing on-fatal injuries.” J. Transp. Econ. Policy, 28(1), 45–59.
Sandhu, B., and Al-Kazily, J. (1996). “Safety impacts of freeway traffic congestion.” Presented at Annual Meeting of Transportation Research Board, January 7–11, Washington, D.C.
Shefer, D., and Rietveld, P.(1997). “Congestion and safety on highways: Towards an analytical model.” Verfahrenstechnik, 34(4), 679–692.
Stokes, R. W., and Mutabazi, M. I.(1996). “Rate-quality control method of identifying hazardous road locations.” Transp. Res. Rec., 1542, 44–48.
Sullivan, E. C.(1990). “Estimating accident benefits of reduced freeway congestion.” J. Transp. Eng., 116(2), 167–180.
Sullivan, E. C., and Hsu, C.-I. (1988). “Accident rates along congested freeways.” Research Rep. UCB-ITS-RR-88-6, Institute of Transportation Studies, Univ. of California, Berkeley, Calif.
Ter Braak, C. J. F.(1990). “Interpreting canonical correlation analysis through biplots of structure correlations and weights.” Psychometrika, 55(3), 519–531.
van Buren, S., and Heiser, W. J.(1989). “Clustering N-objects into K-groups under optimal scaling of variables.” Psychometrika, 54(4), 699–706.
van de Geer, J. P. (1986). “Relationships among k sets of variables, with geometrical representation, and applications to categorical variables.” Multidimensional data analysis, J. de Leeuw et al., eds. DSWO, Leiden, The Netherlands.
van der Burg, E., and de Leeuw, J.(1983). “Non-linear canonical correlation.” Br. J. Math. Stat. Psychol., 36(1), 54–80.
ver Boon, P. (1996). A robust approach to nonlinear multivariate analysis, DSWO, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Vickrey, W.(1969). “Congestion theory and transport investment.” Am. Econ. Rev., 59(2), 251–260.
Vitaliano, D. F., and Held, J.(1991). “Road accident external effects: An empirical assessment.” Appl. Econom., 23(2), 373–378.
Zhou, M., and Sisiopiku, V. P.(1997). “Relationship between volume-to-capacity ratios and accident rates.” Transp. Res. Rec., 1581, 47–52.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 129 • Issue 4 • July 2003
Pages: 342 - 353
Copyright
Copyright © 2003 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Nov 27, 2001
Accepted: Jul 17, 2002
Published online: Jun 13, 2003
Published in print: Jul 2003
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.