Using Accident Correctability to Identify Accident-Prone Locations

Abstract

In traditional black-spot programs aimed at improving highway safety, locations are identified as accident prone based on the total number of accidents. This criteria provides no consideration of whether the accidents were caused or could be corrected by road improvements. This traditional method results in the identification of locations that are not truly hazardous from a road-safety authority perspective and consequently may lead to a misapplication of safety improvement funding. Therefore, accidents should be categorized into one or a combination of the three highway system components: the driver, the vehicle, and the road. In previous work, a procedure has been described that allows each accident to have a membership in each of the three highway system components. This paper describes the application of this procedure for the identification of accident-prone locations. The membership of each accident in the road environment component is used to represent the correctability of accidents by road improvements. Each accident is then weighted by its correctability. The effect of weighting accidents by their correctability is discussed, and the usefulness of the approach is demonstrated.