Applying OHSA to Detect Road Accident Blackspots

With increasing numbers of crashes and injuries, understanding traffic accident spatial patterns and identifying blackspots is critical to improve overall road safety. This study aims at detecting blackspots using optimized hot spot analysis (OHSA). Traffic accidents were classified by their participants and severity to explore the relationship between blackspots and different types of accidents. Based on the outputs of incremental spatial autocorrelation, OHSA was then implemented on different types of accidents. Finally, the performance of OHSA in evaluating the road safety level of the proposed RBT index are examined using a binary correlation analysis (i.e., R(2) = 0.89). The results show that: (1) The optimal scale distance varies from 0.6 km to 2.8 km and is influenced by the distance of the travel mode. (2) Central cities, with 54.6% of the total accidents, experiences more rigorous challenges regarding traffic safety than satellite cities. (3) There are many types of black spots in vulnerable communities, but in some specific areas, there are only black spots of non-motor vehicle accidents. Considering the practical significance of the above results, policy makers and traffic engineers are expected to give higher attention to central cities and vulnerable communities or prioritize the implementation of relevant optimization measures.