Forecasting time trend of road traffic crashes in Iran using the macro-scale traffic flow characteristics

BACKGROUND: The serial correlation in the time series datasets should be considered to prevent biased estimates for coefficients. Nonetheless, the current models almost cannot explicitly handle autocorrelation and seasonality, and they focus mainly on the discrete nature of data. Nonetheless, the crash time series follows a normal distribution at the macro-scale. Moreover, the influential exogenous variables have been overlooked in Iran, employing univariate models. There are also contradictory results in the literature regarding the effect of average speed on crash frequency. OBJECTIVE: This study is aimed to evaluate the distinct impacts of mean speed on total and fatal accident time series at the national level. Besides, the SARIMAX modeling framework is introduced as a robust multivariate method for short-term crash frequency prediction. METHOD: To this end, monthly total and fatal crash counts were aggregated for all rural highways in Iran. Besides, the time trends of traffic exposure, and average speed recorded by loop detectors, were aggregated at the same level as covariates. The Box-Jenkins methodology was employed for time series analysis. RESULTS: The results illustrated that the seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average with explanatory variable (SARIMAX) model outperformed the univariate ARIMA and SARIMA models. Also, SARIMA was more appropriate than the simple ARIMA when seasonality existed in the time series. Besides, the average speed had a negative linear association with the total crashes. In contrast, it revealed an increasing effect on fatal crashes. CONCLUSION: Average speed has a dissimilar effect on the different traffic crash severities. Besides, the seasonal nature of data and the dynamic effects of the influential underlying factors should be considered to prevent underfitting issues and to predict future time trends accurately. APPLICATIONS: The developed instruments could be employed by policymakers to evaluate the intervention's effectiveness and to forecast the future time trends of accidents in Iran.