Factor Complexity of Accident Occurrence: An Empirical Demonstration Using Boosted Regression Trees

Factor complexity is regarded as a typical characteristic of traffic accidents. This paper proposes a novel method, named boosted regression trees (BRTs), which is particularly appropriate for investigating complicated and nonlinear relationships in high-variance traffic accident data. The Taiwan 2004–2005 single-motorcycle accident data are adopted to demonstrate the usefulness of BRTs. Traditional logistic regression and classification and regression tree (CART) models are also developed to compare their estimation results and predictive performance. Both the in-sample cross-validation and out-of-sample validation results show that the increase of tree complexity provided better but declining improvement on the predictive performance, indicating a limited factor complexity of single motorcycle accidents. While a certain portion of fatal accidents can be explained by the main effects of crucial variables including geographical, time, and socio-demographic factors, the relatively unique fatal accidents are better approximated by interactive terms, especially the combinations of behaviorial factors. The BRTs models generally provide better transferability than logistic and CART models. The implications of analysis results for devising safety policies are also provided.

• Record URL:
  • http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/conferences/2011/RSS/1/Chung,Y-S.pdf
• 
• Supplemental Notes:
  • Distribution, posting, or copying of this PDF is strictly prohibited without written permission of the Transportation Research Board of the National Academy of Sciences. Unless otherwise indicated, all materials in this PDF are copyrighted by the National Academy of Sciences. Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

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  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Chung, Yi-Shih
• Conference:
  • 3rd International Conference on Road Safety and Simulation
  • Location: Indianapolis Indiana, United States
  • Date: 2011-9-14 to 2011-9-16
• Publication Date: 2011

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 23p
• Monograph Title: 3rd International Conference on Road Safety and Simulation

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Crash data; Decision trees; Fatalities; Motorcycle crashes; Regression analysis; Traffic crashes; Traffic safety
• Subject Areas: Highways; Safety and Human Factors; I80: Accident Studies;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01504276
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Jan 24 2014 2:29PM