Abstract
Identifying road accident blackspots is an effective strategy for reducing accidents. The application of this method in rural areas is different from highway and urban roads as the latter two have complete geographic information. This paper presents (1) a novel segmentation method using grid clustering and K‐MEDOIDS to study the spatial patterns of road accidents in rural roads, (2) a clustering methodology using principal component analysis (PCA) and improved K‐means to create recognition of road accident blackspots based on segmented results, and (3) using accidents causes in police report to analyze recognition results. The proposed methodology will be illustrated by accident data in Chinese rural area in 2017. A grid‐based partition was carried on by using intersection as a basic spatial unit. Appended hazard scores were then added to the segments and using K‐means clustering, a result of similar hotspots was completed. The accuracy of the results is verified by the analysis of the cause extracted by Fuzzy C‐means algorithm (FCM).
Highlights
Traffic accidents are contingent events and are defined by a series of variables—the accident index, hidden danger index, and risk index—that explain them
This paper, when analyzing rural roads, replaces the units segmented by the established steps with intersections
This paper presents a methodology to identify high density accident black spots on rural highways conducted with the combined use of grid clustering and principal component clustering
Summary
Traffic accidents are contingent events and are defined by a series of variables—the accident index, hidden danger index, and risk index—that explain them. When data is difficult to obtain in detail or changes greatly (such as in rapidly developing rural areas), latent variable models will be more suitable for safety evaluation. With the increase of car ownership and accidents in rural areas, developing countries like China are increasingly aware of the importance of rural road safety. By the end of the “Twelfth Five-Year Plan” (2015), the total mileage of rural roads in China reached more than 3.95 million kilometers. By the end of 2016, the number of household cars per 100 rural households was 17.4 (2016 Social Development Statistics Bulletin, 2017). About two-thirds of all traffic accident deaths occurred on rural roads in 2016 (China Ministry of Transport, 2017). The Chinese government has put forward the slogan of “Four Good Rural Roads” and regards it as the main task of the Thirteenth Five-Year Plan
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