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Relationship Between Traffic Volume and Accident Frequency at Intersections

Driven by the high social costs and emotional trauma that result from traffic accidents around the world, research into understanding the factors that influence accident occurrence is critical. There is a lack of consensus about how the management of congestion may affect traffic accidents. This pap...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Retallack, Angus Eugene, Ostendorf, Bertram
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7068508/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32098180
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17041393
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author Retallack, Angus Eugene
Ostendorf, Bertram
author_facet Retallack, Angus Eugene
Ostendorf, Bertram
author_sort Retallack, Angus Eugene
collection PubMed
description Driven by the high social costs and emotional trauma that result from traffic accidents around the world, research into understanding the factors that influence accident occurrence is critical. There is a lack of consensus about how the management of congestion may affect traffic accidents. This paper aims to improve our understanding of this relationship by analysing accidents at 120 intersections in Adelaide, Australia. Data comprised of 1629 motor vehicle accidents with traffic volumes from a dataset of more than five million hourly measurements. The effect of rainfall was also examined. Results showed an approximately linear relationship between traffic volume and accident frequency at lower traffic volumes. In the highest traffic volumes, poisson and negative binomial models showed a significant quadratic explanatory term as accident frequency increases at a higher rate. This implies that focusing management efforts on avoiding these conditions would be most effective in reducing accident frequency. The relative risk of rainfall on accident frequency decreases with increasing congestion index. Accident risk is five times greater during rain at low congestion levels, successively decreasing to no elevated risk at the highest congestion level. No significant effect of congestion index on accident severity was detected.
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spelling pubmed-70685082020-03-19 Relationship Between Traffic Volume and Accident Frequency at Intersections Retallack, Angus Eugene Ostendorf, Bertram Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Driven by the high social costs and emotional trauma that result from traffic accidents around the world, research into understanding the factors that influence accident occurrence is critical. There is a lack of consensus about how the management of congestion may affect traffic accidents. This paper aims to improve our understanding of this relationship by analysing accidents at 120 intersections in Adelaide, Australia. Data comprised of 1629 motor vehicle accidents with traffic volumes from a dataset of more than five million hourly measurements. The effect of rainfall was also examined. Results showed an approximately linear relationship between traffic volume and accident frequency at lower traffic volumes. In the highest traffic volumes, poisson and negative binomial models showed a significant quadratic explanatory term as accident frequency increases at a higher rate. This implies that focusing management efforts on avoiding these conditions would be most effective in reducing accident frequency. The relative risk of rainfall on accident frequency decreases with increasing congestion index. Accident risk is five times greater during rain at low congestion levels, successively decreasing to no elevated risk at the highest congestion level. No significant effect of congestion index on accident severity was detected. MDPI 2020-02-21 2020-02 /pmc/articles/PMC7068508/ /pubmed/32098180 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17041393 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Retallack, Angus Eugene
Ostendorf, Bertram
Relationship Between Traffic Volume and Accident Frequency at Intersections
title Relationship Between Traffic Volume and Accident Frequency at Intersections
title_full Relationship Between Traffic Volume and Accident Frequency at Intersections
title_fullStr Relationship Between Traffic Volume and Accident Frequency at Intersections
title_full_unstemmed Relationship Between Traffic Volume and Accident Frequency at Intersections
title_short Relationship Between Traffic Volume and Accident Frequency at Intersections
title_sort relationship between traffic volume and accident frequency at intersections
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7068508/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32098180
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17041393
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