Risky behaviors and road safety: An exploration of age and gender influences on road accident rates.

Human behavior is a dominant factor in road accidents, contributing to more than 70% of such incidents. However, gathering detailed data on individual drivers' behavior is a significant challenge in the field of road safety. As a result, researchers often narrow the scope of their studies thus limiting the generalizability of their findings. Our study aims to address this issue by identifying demographic-related variables and their indirect effects on road accident frequency. The theoretical basis is set through existing literature linking demographics to risky driving behavior and through the concept of "close to home" effect, finding that the upwards of 62% of accidents happen within 11km of a driver's home. Using regression-based machine learning models, our study, looking at England, UK, explores the theoretical linkages between demographics of an area and road accident frequency, finding that census data is able to explain over 28% of the variance in road accident rates per capita. While not replacing more in-depth research on driver behavior, this research validates trends found in the literature through the use of widely available data with the use of novel methods. The results of this study support the use of demographic data from the national census that is obtainable at a large spatial and temporal scale to estimate road accident risks; additionally, it demonstrates a methodology to further explore potential indirect relationships and proxies between behaviors and road accident risk.

A standardized European hexagon gridded dataset based on OpenStreetMap POIs.

Point of interest (POI) data refers to information about the location and type of amenities, services, and attractions within a geographic area. This data is used in urban studies research to better understand the dynamics of a city, assess community needs, and identify opportunities for economic growth and development. POI data is beneficial because it provides a detailed picture of the resources available in a given area, which can inform policy decisions and improve the quality of life for residents. This paper presents a large-scale, standardized POI dataset from OpenStreetMap (OSM) for the European continent. The dataset's standardization and gridding make it more efficient for advanced modeling, reducing 7,218,304 data points to 988,575 without significant resolution loss, suitable for a broader range of models with lower computational demands. The resulting dataset can be used to conduct advanced analyses, examine POI spatial distributions, conduct comparative regional studies, and research to help enhance the understanding of the distribution of economic activity and attractions, and subsequently help in the understanding of the economic health, growth potential, and cultural opportunities of an area. The paper describes the materials and methods used in generating the dataset, including OSM data retrieval, processing, standardization, hexagonal grid generation, and point count aggregations. The dataset can be used independently or integrated with other relevant datasets for more comprehensive spatial distribution studies in future research.