Predicting Injury Severity of Angle Crashes Involving Two Vehicles at Unsignalized Intersections Using Artificial Neural Networks

S A Arhin,A Gatiba

doi:10.48084/etasr.2551

Abstract

In 2015, about 20% of the 52,231 fatal crashes that occurred in the United States occurred at unsignalized intersections. The economic cost of these fatalities have been estimated to be in the millions of dollars. In order to mitigate the occurrence of theses crashes, it is necessary to investigate their predictability based on the pertinent factors and circumstances that might have contributed to their occurrence. This study focuses on the development of models to predict injury severity of angle crashes at unsignalized intersections using artificial neural networks (ANNs). The models were developed based on 3,307 crashes that occurred from 2008 to 2015. Twenty-five different ANN models were developed. The most accurate model predicted the severity of an injury sustained in a crash with an accuracy of 85.62%. This model has 3 hidden layers with 5, 10, and 5 neurons, respectively. The activation functions in the hidden and output layers are the rectilinear unit function and sigmoid function, respectively.

Highlights

Even though intersections constitute a relatively low proportion of the facilities of transportation systems, a significant number of crashes occur at these locations, especially in urban areas
In California for instance, an annual average of 1.5 crashes occur at unsignalized intersections in rural locations, compared to an average of 2.5 crashes per year in urban locations [1]
Out of the total of 52,231 fatal crashes in the United States in 2015, approximately 4.4% (2,298) of the crashes occurred at STOPcontrolled intersections, while 7.5% (3,917) of the crashes occurred at intersections controlled by traffic signals

Summary

Introduction

Even though intersections constitute a relatively low proportion of the facilities of transportation systems, a significant number of crashes occur at these locations, especially in urban areas. In California for instance, an annual average of 1.5 crashes occur at unsignalized intersections in rural locations, compared to an average of 2.5 crashes per year in urban locations [1]. In the United States, there were a total of 37,456 fatalities in road-related crashes reported in 2016 [3]. Though most of these crashes occurred on road segments, a significant number occurred at or near intersections. Out of the total of 52,231 fatal crashes in the United States in 2015, approximately 4.4% (2,298) of the crashes occurred at STOPcontrolled intersections, while 7.5% (3,917) of the crashes occurred at intersections controlled by traffic signals. Intersections without any type of traffic control device recorded the highest number of fatal crashes (4,227) [4]

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion