Fatality Prediction for Motor Vehicle Collisions: Mining Big Data Using Deep Learning and Ensemble Methods

Abstract

Motor vehicle crashes are one of the most common causes of fatalities on the roads. Real-time severity prediction of such crashes may contribute towards reducing the rate of fatality. In this study, the fundamental goal is to develop machine learning models that predict whether the outcome of a collision will be fatal or not. A Canadian road crash dataset containing 5.8 million records is utilized in this research. In this study, ensemble models have been developed using majority and soft voting to address the class imbalance in the dataset. The prediction accuracy of approximately 75% is achieved using Convolutional Neural Networks. Moreover, a comprehensive analysis of the attributes that are important in distinguishing between fatal vs. non-fatal motor vehicle collisions has been presented in this paper. In-depth information content analysis reveals the factors that contribute the most in the prediction model. These include roadway characteristics and weather conditions at the time of the crash, vehicle type, time when the collision happen, road user class and their position, any safety device used, and the status of traffic control. With real-time data based on weather and road conditions, an automated warning system can potentially be developed utilizing the prediction model employed in this study.