Development of Traffic Accident frequency Prediction Model by Administrative zone - A Case of Seoul

Abstract

In Korea, the local traffic safety master plan has been established and implemented according to the Traffic Safety Act. Each local government is required to establish a customized traffic safety policy and share roles for improvement of traffic safety and this means that local governments lead and promote effective local traffic safety policies fit for local circumstances in substance. For implementing efficient traffic safety policies, which accord with many-sided characteristics of local governments, the prediction of community-based traffic accidents, which considers local characteristics and the analysis of accident influence factors must be preceded, but there is a shortage of research on this. Most of existing studies on the community-based traffic accident prediction used social and economic variables related to accident exposure environments in countries or cities due to the limit of collected data. For this reason, there was a limit in applying the developed models to the actual reduction of traffic accidents. Thus, this study developed a local traffic accident prediction model, based on smaller regional units, administrative districts, which were not omitted in existing studies and suggested a method to reflect traffic safety facility and policy variables that traffic safety policy makers can control, in addition to social and economic variables related to accident exposure environments, in the model and apply them to the development of local traffic safety policies. The model development result showed that in terms of accident exposure environments, road extension, gross floor area of buildings, the ratio of bus lane installation and the number of crossroads and crosswalks had a positive relation with accidents and the ratio of crosswalk sign installation, the number of speed bumps and the results of clampdown by police force had a negative relation with accidents.