THE SPECTRAL ANALYSIS OF FATAL ACCIDENT TIME SERIES

THE USE OF SPECTRAL ANALYSIS TO REVEAL REPETITIVE FEATURES IN THE HISTORY OF HIGHWAY ACCIDENTS IS ILLUSTRATED BY AN APPLICATION OF THIS TECHNIQUE TO THE MICHIGAN FATAL ACCIDENT RECORD FOR THE 1969 CALENDAR YEAR. THE TIME SERIES OF FATAL ACCIDENTS BY WEEK AND BY DAY OF THE YEAR ARE USED TO DEMONSTRATE THE ABILITY OF SPECTRAL ANALYSIS TO QUANTITATIVELY DETERMINE CHARACTERISTIC REPETITION FREQUENCIES IN THE DATA AND TO RANK THE VARIOUS FREQUENCIES THAT ARE FOUND IN TERMS OF THEIR AMPLITUDE OR SPECTRAL STRENGTH. SEVERAL INTERESTING FEATURES OF THE RESULTING SPECTRA INDICATE THAT THIS TECHNIQUE MAY HAVE VALUE IN LOCATING ACCIDENT PATTERNS THAT MIGHT OTHERWISE ESCAPE OBSERVATION. /AUTHOR/

• Supplemental Notes:
  • pp 5-8, 4 FIG, 3 TAB
• Corporate Authors:

  Highway Safety Research Institute

  /Hit Lab Reports
  ,   United States 
• Authors:
  • GREEN, J A
• Publication Date: 1971-9

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Days; Fast Fourier transforms; Fatalities; Fourier transforms; Information processing; Seasons; Spectrum analysis; Time series analysis; Traffic crashes; Travel patterns; Weekly; Years
• Uncontrolled Terms: Seasonal variations
• Old TRIS Terms: Weekly traffic pattern
• Subject Areas: Highways; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00221510
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Dec 20 1971 12:00AM