We present an approach to estimate the severity of traffic related accidents in aggregated (area-level) and disaggregated (point level) data. Exploring spatial features, we measure complexity of road networks using several area level variables. Also using temporal and other situational features from open data for New York City, we use Gradient Boosting models for inference and measuring feature importance along with Gaussian Processes to model spatial dependencies in the data. The results show significant importance of complexity in aggregated model as well as as other features in prediction which may be helpful in framing policies and targeting interventions for preventing severe traffic related accidents and injuries.
Accident prediction models are invaluable tools that have many applications in road safety analysis. However, there are certain statistical issues related to accident modeling that either deserve further attention or have not been dealt with adequately in the road safety literature. This paper discusses and illustrates how to deal with two statistical issues related to modeling accidents using Poisson and negative binomial regression. The first issue is that of model building or deciding which explanatory variables to include in an accident prediction model. The study differentiates between applications for which it is advisable to avoid model over-fitting and other applications for which it is desirable to fit the model to the data as closely as possible. It then suggests procedures for developing parsimonious models, i.e., models that are not over-fitted, and best-fit models. The second issue discussed in the paper is that of outlier analysis. The study suggests a procedure for the identification and exclusion of extremely influential outliers from the development of Poisson and negative binomial regression models. The procedures suggested for model building and conducting outlier analysis are more straightforward to apply in the case of Poisson regression models because of an added complexity presented by the shape parameter of the negative binomial distribution. The paper, therefore, presents flowcharts detailing the application of the procedures when modeling is carried out using negative binomial regression. The described procedures are then applied in the development of negative binomial accident prediction models for the urban arterials of the cities of Vancouver and Richmond located in the province of British Columbia, Canada. Abstract This paper describes some of the main findings from two separate studies on accident prediction models for urban junctions and urban road links described in [Uheldsmodel for bygader-Del1: Modeller for 3-og 4-benede kryds. Notat 22, The Danish Road Directorate, 1995; Uheldsmodel for bygader- Del2: Modeller for straekninger. Notat 59, The Danish Road Directorate, 1998] ( Greibe and Hemdorff, 1995 , Greibe and Hemdorff, 1998 ). The main objective for the studies was to establish simple, practicable accident models that can predict the expected number of accidents at urban junctions and road links as accurately as possible. The models can be used to identify factors affecting road safety and in relation to ‘black spot’ identification and network safety analysis undertaken by local road authorities. The accident prediction models are based on data from 1036 junctions and 142 km road links in urban areas. Generalised linear modelling techniques were used to relate accident frequencies to explanatory variables. The estimated accident prediction models for road links were capable of describing more than 60 of the systematic variation (‘percentage-explained’ value) while the models for junctions had lower values. This indicates that modelling accidents for road links is less complicated than for junctions, probably due to a more uniform accident pattern and a simpler traffic flow exposure or due to lack of adequate explanatory variables for junctions. Explanatory variables describing road design and road geometry proved to be significant for road link models but less important in junction models. The most powerful variable for all models was motor vehicle traffic flow.