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Abstract
Understanding how crash factors are impacted by rain is critical to road safety planning and management. This study assesses the impact of rain on traffic safety by conducting an analysis of the fatal crashes related to rain in Texas from 1994 to 2018. The fatal crash data was gathered from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) database maintained by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Environmental variables used in the analysis include month of the year, time of the day, temperature, and weather condition. The roadway-related factors identified include the posted speed limit, the number of lanes, route sign, and Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT). The driver-related factors identified include age, gender, and the number of licensed drivers in total. Relative risk analysis was performed to statistically quantify the impact of rainy conditions at the hourly and monthly time scales. On average, rain-related fatal crashes represented about 6.8% of the total fatal crashes. However, the proportion shows higher variability at the annual, monthly, and hourly time scales and seems to be influenced by other factors such as the age and gender of the driver, type of the road, and posted roadway speed limit. Total and rain-related crashes show statistically significant decreasing trends when normalized by the total number of licensed drivers or vehicle miles travelled. The relative risk of a fatal crash during rainy conditions was always greater than 1.0 at hourly, monthly, and annual time scales. However, it shows significant variability at the monthly (1.07 to 2.78) and hourly scales (1.35 to 2.57). The relative risk is higher in less urbanized and drier counties, in general. Gender and age analysis reveals that male and young drivers are more likely to be involved in a fatal crash but less likely to be killed in the crash.
Highlights
Transportation safety research is concerned with understating the crash factors and the factors that influence crash severity
In order to limit the number of fatal crashes, it is essential to identify and understand the main factors that lead to their occurrence [4]
This study aims to assess and quantify the impact of rain on traffic safety in Texas by investigating all fatal crashes that occurred under rainy conditions in Texas from 1994 to 2018
Summary
Transportation safety research is concerned with understating the crash factors and the factors that influence crash severity. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), road traffic crashes kill approximately 1.35 million people around the world each year and injure between 20 and 50 million people [1]. There are serious concerns in the U.S regarding the high number of fatal motor vehicle crashes in some states [2]. In order to limit the number of fatal crashes, it is essential to identify and understand the main factors that lead to their occurrence [4]. There are numerous driver-related, vehicle-related, road-related, and environment-related factors that affect crash incidence and severity. Application of new data analytics and data mining techniques on large databases of crashes is one of the few robust methods to identify factors that increase the chances of a traffic crash [5]. Traditional statistical methods are still widely used to determine the relationship between crashes and causal factors including correlation analysis and risk ratios
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