Highway Accident Modeling Influence of Geometrics

Abstract

This paper revisits the question of the relationship between rural road geometric characteristics, accident rates and their prediction, using a rigorous non-parametric statistical methodology known as hierarchical tree-based regression. The results show that although the importance of isolated variables differs between two-lane and multilane roads, ‘geometric design’ variables and ‘pavement condition’ variables are the two most important factors affecting accident rates. Further, the methodology used in this paper allows for the explicit prediction of accident rates for given highway sections, as soon as the profile of a road section is given
Keywords: Accident rates; rural roads; Hierarchical tree based regression