Identifying emerging hot spots of road traffic injury severity using spatiotemporal methods: longitudinal analyses on major roads in Ghana from 2005 to 2020.

BACKGROUND: Although road traffic injuries and deaths have decreased globally, there is substantial national and sub-national heterogeneity, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Ghana is one of few countries in Africa collecting comprehensive, spatially detailed data on motor vehicle collisions (MVCs). This data is a critical step towards improving roadway safety, as accurate and reliable information is essential for devising targeted countermeasures. METHODS: Here, we analyze 16 years of police-report data using emerging hot spot analysis in ArcGIS to identify hot spots with trends of increasing injury severity (a weighted composite measure of MVCs, minor injuries, severe injuries, and deaths), and counts of injuries, severe injuries, and deaths along major roads in urban and rural areas of Ghana. RESULTS: We find injury severity index sums and minor injury counts are significantly decreasing over time in Ghana while severe injury and death counts are not, indicating the latter should be the focus for road safety efforts. We identify new, consecutive, intensifying, and persistent hot spots on 2.65% of urban roads and 4.37% of rural roads. Hot spots are intensifying in terms of severity and frequency on major roads in rural areas. CONCLUSIONS: A few key road sections, particularly in rural areas, show elevated levels of road traffic injury severity, warranting targeted interventions. Our method for evaluating spatiotemporal trends in MVC, road traffic injuries, and deaths in a LMIC includes sufficient detail for replication and adaptation in other countries, which is useful for targeting countermeasures and tracking progress.

"We are pleading for the government to do more": Road user perspectives on the magnitude, contributing factors, and potential solutions to road traffic injuries and deaths in Ghana.

Road traffic collisions disproportionately impact Ghana and other low- and middle-income countries. This study explored road user perspectives regarding the magnitude, contributing factors, and potential solutions to road traffic collisions, injuries, and deaths. We designed a qualitative study of 24 in-depth interviews with 14 vulnerable road users (pedestrians, occupants of powered 2- and 3-wheelers, cyclists) and ten non-vulnerable road users in four high-risk areas in November 2022. We used a mixed deductive (direct content analysis) and inductive (interpretive phenomenological analysis) approach. In the direct content analysis, a priori categories based on Haddon's Matrix covered human, vehicle, socioeconomic environment, and physical environment factors influencing road traffic collisions, along with corresponding solutions. We used inductive analysis to identify emerging themes. Participants described frequent and distressing experiences with collisions, and most often reported contributing factors, implementation gaps, and potential solutions within the human (road user) level domain of Haddon's Matrix. Implementation challenges included sporadic enforcement, reliance on road users' adherence to safety laws, and the low quality of the existing infrastructure. Participants expressed that they felt neglected and ignored by road safety decision-makers. This research emphasizes the need for community input for successful road safety policies in Ghana and other low- and middle-income countries, calling for greater governmental support an action to address this public health crisis. We recommend the government collaborates with communities to adapt existing interventions including speed calming, footbridges, and police enforcement, and introduces new measures that meet local needs.

Generating consensus on road safety issues and priorities in Ghana: A modified Delphi approach.

BACKGROUND: Implementation of evidence-based approaches to reduce the substantial health, social, and financial burdens of road traffic injuries and deaths in Ghana and other low-and-middle-income countries (LMICs) is vitally important. Consensus from national stakeholders can provide insight into what evidence to generate and which interventions to prioritize for road safety. The main objective of this study was to elicit expert views on the barriers to reaching international and national road safety targets, the gaps in national-level research, implementation, and evaluation, and the future action priorities. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We used an iterative three-round modified Delphi process to generate consensus among Ghanaian road safety stakeholders. We defined consensus as 70% or more stakeholders selecting a specific response in the survey. We defined partial consensus (termed "majority") as 50% or more stakeholders selecting a particular response. RESULTS: Twenty-three stakeholders from different sectors participated. Experts generated consensus on barriers to road safety goals, including the poor regulation of commercial and public transport vehicles and limited use of technology to monitor and enforce traffic behaviors and laws. Stakeholders agreed that the impact of increasing motorcycle (2- and 3-wheel) use on road traffic injury burden is poorly understood and that it is a priority to evaluate road-user risk factors such as speed, helmet use, driving skills, and distracted driving. One emerging area was the impact of unattended/disabled vehicles along roadways. There was consensus on the need for additional research, implementation, and evaluation efforts of several interventions, including focused treatment of hazardous spots, driver training, road safety education as part of academic curricula, promotion of community involvement in first aid, development of strategically positioned trauma centers, and towing of disabled vehicles. CONCLUSION: This modified Delphi process with stakeholders from Ghana generated consensus on road safety research, implementation, and evaluation priorities.

A comparative study of collision types between automated and conventional vehicles using Bayesian probabilistic inferences.

INTRODUCTION: Automated vehicle (AV) technology is a promising technology for improving the efficiency of traffic operations and reducing emissions. This technology has the potential to eliminate human error and significantly improve highway safety. However, little is known about AV safety issues due to limited crash data and relatively fewer AVs on the roadways. This study provides a comparative analysis between AVs and conventional vehicles on the factors leading to different types of collisions. METHOD: A Bayesian Network (BN) fitted using the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) was used to achieve the study objective. Four years (2017-2020) of AV and conventional vehicle crash data on California roads were used. The AV crash dataset was acquired from the California Department of Motor Vehicles, while conventional vehicle crashes were obtained from the Transportation Injury Mapping System database. A buffer of 50 feet was used to associate each AV crash and conventional vehicle crash; a total of 127 AV crashes and 865 conventional vehicle crashes were used for analysis. RESULTS: Our comparative analysis of the associated features suggests that AVs are 43% more likely to be involved in rear-end crashes. Further, AVs are 16% and 27% less likely to be involved in sideswipe/broadside and other types of collisions (head-on, hitting an object, etc.), respectively, when compared to conventional vehicles. The variables associated with the increased likelihood of rear-end collisions for AVs include signalized intersections and lanes with less than 45 mph speed limit. CONCLUSIONS: Although AVs are found to improve safety on the road in most types of collisions by limiting human error leading to vehicle crashes, the current state of the technology shows that safety aspects still need improvement.

Impacts of COVID-19 on the Operational Performance of Express Lanes and General-Purpose Lanes.

The COVID-19 pandemic outbreak brought significant changes in the travel behavior and operational characteristics of transportation systems. Express lanes (ELs) are among the transportation facilities that are affected by this pandemic. These facilities are built adjacent to existing general-purpose lanes (GPLs), providing drivers additional lanes that are dynamically priced in response to changing traffic conditions. This research investigated the impacts of COVID-19 on the operational performance of ELs and GPLs based on field data from a 5.5 mi corridor on I-95 in Miami, Florida, U.S. The traffic flow parameters, which include speed, traffic flow, and occupancy, were used to describe the traffic conditions before and during COVID-19 (i.e., March-June 2019 and March-June 2020, respectively). The travel time reliability measures, coefficient of variation of travel time, and planning time index, were used to measure user satisfaction. These metrics were derived from a multivariate Bayesian additive regression model that was developed to calibrate the traffic conditions on the study corridor. Overall, the model results indicated that both ELs and GPLs have less variation in travel time, thus making the travel time more reliable during COVID-19 than before. This may be attributed to the decline in the traffic volume observed during the pandemic. The results further showed that COVID-19 had more impact on the GPLs compared with the ELs. The results from this research could assist transportation agencies in understanding the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on ELs and GPLs in relation to traffic operations.

What are the leading causes of fatal and severe injury crashes involving older pedestrian? Evidence from Bayesian network model.

INTRODUCTION: Identifying factors contributing to the risk of older pedestrian fatal/severe injuries, along with their possible interdependency, is the first step towards improving safety. Several previous studies focused on identifying the influence of individual factors while ignoring their interdependencies. This study investigated the leading risk factors associated with older pedestrian fatalities/severe injuries by identifying the interdependency relationship among variables. METHOD: A Bayesian Logistic Regression (BLR) model was developed to identify significant factors influencing pedestrian fatalities and severe injuries, followed by a Bayesian Network (BN) model to reveal the interdependency relationship among the statistically significant variables and crash severity. Furthermore, the probabilistic inference was conducted to identify the leading cause of fatal and severe injuries involving older pedestrians. The models were developed with data from 913 pedestrian crashes involving older pedestrians at signalized intersections in Florida from 2016 through 2018. RESULTS: Vehicle maneuver, lighting condition, road type, and shoulder type were directly associated with older pedestrian fatality/severe injury. Vehicle maneuver (going straight ahead) was the most significant factor in influencing the severity of crashes involving older pedestrians. The interdependency of vehicle moving straight, nighttime condition, and two-way divided roadway with curbed shoulders was associated with the highest likelihood of fatal and severe-injury crashes involving older pedestrians. CONCLUSIONS: The Bayesian Network revealed the interdependency between variables associated with fatal and severe injury-crashes involving older pedestrians. The interdependency relationship with the highest likelihood to cause fatalities/severe-injuries comprised factors with the significant individual contribution to the severity of crashes involving older pedestrians. Practical applications: The interdependencies among variables identified in this research could help devise targeted engineering, education, and enforcement strategies that could potentially have a greater effect on improving the safety of older pedestrians.

Exploring pre-crash gate violations behaviors of drivers at highway-rail grade crossings using a mixed multinomial logit model.

The highway-rail grade crossings (HRGCs) across the United States have been experiencing about 2500 crashes each year. Previous studies analyzed crash frequencies and fatalities; however, factors pertaining to drivers' gate violation behaviors are little known. Also, applied methodologies for gate violation behaviors analysis did not consider their heterogeneity across regions. This study uses 20-year of crash data (1999-2018) to evaluate pre-crash drivers' behaviors at HRGCs. A mixed multinomial logit model was developed to associate such behaviors with demographic factors, vehicle characteristics, temporal and environmental factors, as well as crossing-related factors. The study results indicated a high intra-class correlation coefficient which signifies the importance of including the random-effect parameter in the model. Further, the study found that male drivers are more likely to drive around the gate, while older drivers are more likely to stop and proceed before a train has passed. Furthermore, compared to trucks, all other vehicle types are more likely to drive around the gate. The influence of train speed, vehicle occupancy, visibility, among others, on drivers' pre-crash behaviors, is also presented. Understanding the impact of these factors on pre-crash behaviors may assist in improving the motorist's safety at the highway-rail grade crossings across the United States.

Evaluating the impact of Road Rangers in preventing secondary crashes.

Many transportation agencies utilize freeway service patrols (FSPs) to quickly identify and respond to incidents. The objectives of FSP are to minimize the incident duration and increase safety at the incident scene. The current research explored the safety benefits of Florida's FSP program known as Road Rangers - harnessed from lowering the likelihood of secondary crashes (SCs) - compared to other responding agencies. The analysis was done on 6088 incidents that occurred on freeways in Jacksonville, Florida, from 2015 through 2017. Since SCs were not explicitly identified in the SunGuide® incident database, the study adopted a data-driven technique that used BlueToad® speed data to identify them. Once SCs were identified, a model was developed to identify factors influencing their occurrence. Factors such as an increase in equivalent hourly traffic volume, incident impact duration, and the percent of lanes closed significantly increased the likelihood of a SC. Besides, moderate/severe incidents, crash events, weekdays, peak hours, shoulder blockage, and incidents involving towing showed a high likelihood of resulting in a SC. Of practical importance, the model results revealed that a minute increase in incident impact duration increased the SC probability by 1.2 percent, with other factors held constant. Based on a 16-minutes decrease in incident impact duration, the Road Rangers program could lessen the probability of SCs by 21 percent, compared to other agencies. These findings could be beneficial to incident managers, responders, and researchers in evaluating the program's performance.

A before-after full bayes multivariate intervention model to estimate the safety effectiveness of red light cameras.

OBJECTIVE: Intersection-related crashes account for approximately 40% of all crashes and tend to be more severe. Red-light running (RLR) crashes are most severe as almost half of these crashes result in injuries and fatalities. To reduce RLR crashes, agencies have been deploying red light cameras (RLCs). The main objective of this study was to evaluate the safety effectiveness of RLCs in the City of Miami Beach, Florida. METHOD: The full Bayes (FB) approach was conducted based on five treatment intersections with six RLCs and 14 comparison intersections without RLCs. The analysis focused on target crash types, including rear-end, sideswipe, and angle/left-turn/right-turn crashes, and crash severity. RESULTS: The FB analysis indicated a significant sudden drop in all types of target crashes immediately after the installation of RLCs. Compared to the before-period, the after-period experienced: fewer angle/left-turn/right-turn crashes, fewer sideswipe crashes, and more rear-end crashes. The sideswipe and angle/left-turn/right-turn crashes dropped immediately after the installation of RLCs and then continued to increase, but they were still lower than the before- period. The rear-end crashes dropped immediately after the installation of RLCs and then continued to increase, but they increased at a steeper rate. Major and minor approaches AADT, higher speed limit, longer amber time, length of pedestrian crosswalk, and number of driveways within the intersection influence area increased the frequency of total target, PDO, and FI crashes. Intersections with all-red interval more than two seconds, major approach with more than two through lanes, and minor approach with more than one through lane, on the contrary, resulted in a fewer number of the total target, PDO, and FI crashes. The treatment indicator showed that treatment intersections experienced fewer FI, angle/left-turn/right-turn, and sideswipe crashes and more total, PDO, and rear-end crashes compared to the non-treatment intersections. CONCLUSION: This study provides reliable estimates of the safety effectiveness of RLCs since it accounts for uncertainties in the data, regression-to-the-mean, and spillover effects.

Prediction of vehicle occupants injury at signalized intersections using real-time traffic and signal data.

Intersections are among the most dangerous roadway facilities due to the existence of complex movements of traffic. Most of the previous intersection safety studies are conducted based on static and highly aggregated data such as average daily traffic and crash frequency. The aggregated data may result in unreliable findings because they are based on averages and might not necessarily represent the actual conditions at the time of the crash. This study uses real-time event-based detection records, and crash data to develop predictive models for the vehicle occupants' injury severity. The three-year (2017-2019) data were acquired from the arterial highways in the City of Tallahassee, Florida. Random Forest (RF) and eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) classifiers were used to identify the important factors on the vehicle occupants' injury severity prediction. The performance comparison of the two classifiers revealed that the XGBoost has a higher balanced accuracy score than RF. Using the XGBoost classifier, five topmost influential factors on injury prediction were identified. The factors are the manner of the collision, through and right-turn traffic volume, arrival on red for through and right-turn traffic, split failure for through traffic, and delays for through and right-turn traffic. Moreover, the partial dependency plots of the influential variables are presented to reveal their impact on vehicle occupant injury prediction. The knowledge gained from this study will be useful in developing effective proactive countermeasures to mitigate intersection-related crash injuries in real-time.

Severity analysis of crashes on express lane facilities using support vector machine model trained by firefly algorithm.

OBJECTIVE: Express lanes (ELs) provide an alternative way for improving the capacity of the existing freeway network without considerably expanding the roadway footprint. Although much research has been done to explore factors contributing to crashes on these facilities, there is not much discussion on factors influencing their injury severity. This study explored factors influencing the injury severity of crashes on EL facilities. METHOD: A Support Vector Machine (SVM) model trained by the Firefly Algorithm was used to identify factors influencing the injury severity of crashes on EL facilities. The analysis was based on three years of crash data (2012-2014) from four EL facilities in California, totaling 61 miles. RESULTS: The results indicated that the following factors increased the probability of an injury or a fatality: concrete barriers, high average annual daily traffic, rolling or mountainous terrain, weekend, adverse road surface condition, and nighttime condition. Moreover, wide right and left shoulder widths decreased the probability of having an injury or a fatality. CONCLUSIONS: The results provide insights into the influence of different geometric characteristics and crash-related factors on the severity of crashes on EL facilities. The study findings may assist agencies to better understand the impacts of factors contributing to injury and fatal crashes on EL facilities and implement strategies to reduce the severity of these crashes.

Severity of motorcycle crashes in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

OBJECTIVE: Motorcycles are a common mode of transportation in low- and middle-income countries. Tanzania, in particular, has experienced an increased use of motorcycles in the last decade. In Dar es Salaam, motorcycles provide door-to-door travel and often operate where more conventional services are uneconomical or physically impossible to maneuver. Although motorcycles play a crucial role in improving mobility in the city, they have several safety issues. This study focuses on identifying factors influencing the severity of motorcycle crashes. METHOD: A multinomial logit analysis was conducted to identify factors influencing the severity of motorcycle crashes in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The severity categories were fatal, severe injury, minor injury, and property damage only (PDO). The analysis was based on a total of 784 motorcycle crashes that occurred from 2013 to 2016. RESULTS: The following factors were found to increase the probability of a fatality: Speeding, driving under the influence, head-on impact, presence of horizontal curves, reckless riding, off-peak hours, violations, and riding without a helmet. The results indicate that crashes occurring on weekdays, during peak hours, at intersections, involving a rear-end impact, in daylight, on street roads, and under clear weather conditions decrease the probability of a fatality. However, minor injury and PDO crashes were found to be associated with crashes occurring during peak hours, at intersections, and on street roads, as well as failure to yield right-of-way. CONCLUSIONS: Several countermeasures are recommended based on the study findings. The recommended countermeasures focus on the holistic safety improvement strategies constituting the three Es of highway safety, namely, engineering, education, and enforcement.

Investigating proximity of crash locations to aging pedestrian residences.

Many campaigns promote walking for recreation, work, and general-purpose trips for health and environmental benefits. This study investigated factors that influence the occurrence of crashes involving elderly pedestrians in relation to where they reside. Using actual pedestrian residential addresses, a Google integrated GIS-based method was developed for estimating distances from crash locations to pedestrian residences. A generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) was used to evaluate the effect of factors associated with residences, such as age group, roadway features, and demographic characteristics on the proximity of crash locations. Results indicated that the proximity of crash locations to pedestrian residences is influenced by the pedestrian age, gender, roadway traffic volume, seasons of the year, and pedestrian residence demographic characteristics. The findings of this study can be used by transportation agencies to develop plans that enhance aging pedestrian safety and improve livability.

Likelihood estimation of secondary crashes using Bayesian complementary log-log model.

Secondary crashes (SCs) occur within the spatial and temporal impact range of a primary incident. They are non-recurring events and are major contributors to increased traffic delay, and reduced safety, particularly in urban areas. However, the limited knowledge on the nature of SCs has largely impeded their mitigation strategies. The primary objective of this study was to develop a reliable SC risk prediction model using real-time traffic flow conditions. The study data were collected on a 35-mile I-95 freeway section for three years in Jacksonville, Florida. SCs were identified based on travel speed data archived by the Bluetooth detectors. Bayesian random effect complementary log-log model was used to link the probability of SCs with real-time traffic flow characteristics, primary incident characteristics, environmental conditions, and geometric characteristics. Random forests technique was used to select the important variables. The results indicated that the following variables significantly affect the likelihood of SCs: average occupancy, incident severity, percent of lanes closed, incident type, incident clearance duration, incident impact duration, and incident occurrence time. The study results have the potential to proactively prevent SCs.

A full Bayesian approach to appraise the safety effects of pedestrian countdown signals to drivers.

Although they are meant for pedestrians, pedestrian countdown signals (PCSs) give cues to drivers about the length of the remaining green phase, hence affecting drivers' behavior at intersections. This study focuses on the evaluation of the safety effectiveness of PCSs to drivers, in the cities of Jacksonville and Gainesville, Florida, using crash modification factors (CMFs) and crash modification functions (CMFunctions). A full Bayes (FB) before-and-after with comparison group method was used to quantify the safety impacts of PCSs to drivers. The CMFs were established for distinctive categories of crashes based on crash type (rear-end and angle collisions) and severity level (total, fatal and injury (FI), and property damage only (PDO) collisions). The CMFs findings indicated that installing PCSs result in a significant improvement of drivers' safety, at a 95% Bayesian credible interval (BCI), for total, PDO, and rear-end collisions. The results of FI and angle crashes were not significant. The CMFunctions indicate that the treatment effectiveness varies considerably with post-treatment time and traffic volume. Nevertheless, the CMFs on rear-end crashes are observed to decline with post-treatment time. In summary, the results suggest the usefulness of PCSs for drivers. The findings of this study may prompt a need for a broader research to investigate the need to design PCSs that will serve the purpose not only of pedestrians, but drivers as well.