What You Eat Matters Road Safety: A Data Mining Approach

Abstract

Background/Objectives: To assess the influence of dietary habit on driving performance of a driver and its impact on road traffic accident to ensure road safety. Methods/Statistical Analysis: A total of 573 accidents data from year 2012 is used and a data mining approach, Association rule mining technique is applied to build a pattern to assess the influence of dietary habit on driving performance of a driver and its impact on road traffic accident by integrating traffic accident; Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) and nutritional data; National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from US. Findings: The result indicates that driver’s dietary habit can be one of the factors to road traffic accident along with driver’s license type and status, gender and type of road. The trained rules shows out of 573 traffic accidents 573(100%) related to drivers who had a habit of having non combination of food, 520(90%) drivers was having non commercial and suspended driving license, 299(52.1%) of drivers were owner of the vehicle, 238(41.5%) has habit of non combination of food, 290(50.6%) were male drivers, 252(43.9%) accidents has relation to non drunk driver, 234(40.8%) occurred in non junction and 270(47.1%) intersection point. Applications/Improvements: The results can be used by transportation departments to devise best strategies to ensure road traffic safety and protect the insurance business from losses of great amount of money.