• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.35-44
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• 2021

In recent times, several studies have been conducted focusing on crashes occurring on the main segment of the highway. However, there is a dearth of research dealing with traffic safety relating to other highway facilities, especially ramp areas. According to the Korea Expressway Corporation's Expressway Information Service, 6,717 crashes have occurred on ramps in the five years from 2015~2019, which accounts for about 15% of all highway accidents. In this study, the simple and full safety performance functions (SPFs) were evaluated and explored using different statistical distributions (i.e., Poisson Gamma (PG) and Poisson Inverse Gaussian (PIG)) and techniques (i.e., fixed effects (FE) and random effects (RE)) to provide more accurate crash prediction models for highway ramp sections. Data on the geometric characteristics of traffic and roadways were collected from various systems and with extensive efforts using a street-view application. The results showed that the PIG models present more accurate crash predictions in general. The results also indicated that the RE models performed better than FE models for simple and full SPFs. The findings from this study offer transportation practitioners using the Korea Expressway Corporation's Expressway a dependable reference to enhance and understand traffic safety in ramp areas based on accurate crash prediction models and empirical evidence.