• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.133-143
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• 2012

PURPOSES: Using the collected data for crash, traffic volume, and design elements on ramps between 2007 and 2009, this research effort was initiated to develop traffic crash prediction models for expressway ramps. METHODS: Three negative binomial regression models and three zero-inflated negative binomial regression models were developed for individual ramp types, including direct, semi-direct and loop, respectively. For validating the developed models, authors compared the estimated crash frequencies with actual crash frequencies of twelve randomly selected interchanges, the ramps of which have not been used for model developing. RESULTS: The results show that the negative binomial regression models for direct, semi-direct and loop ramps showed 60.3%, 63.8% and 48.7% error rates on average whereas the zero-inflated negative binomial regression models showed 82.1%, 120.4% and 57.3%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Conclusively, the negative binomial regression models worked better in traffic crash prediction than the zero-inflated negative binomial regression models for estimating the frequency of traffic accidents on expressway ramps.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.97-105
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• 2011

This paper presents how one can investigate the effects on crash occurrence of freeway geometric design elements including the horizontal, vertical alignment and road environment. At present, the available research results for the most part involve geometric data analysis that are obtained along a relatively long section of freeway, and, because of the long section's diverse geometric conditions, the results tend to miss the specific local geometric impacts on vehicle crashes. In this regard, this research attempts to establish vehicle crash models based on a set of freeway geometric patterns whose crash generating characteristics are identical because they are homogeneous in terms of producing the same vehicle operating speeds, and subsequently their actual relationships are described by providing statistical analysis made in this research. Also each standard is comprised of part of straight, curve and continuous curve. This research has revealed that each type of model has different relation between accident and geometry structure. This research results should be useful for doing more reasonable highway designs and safety audit analysis.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.151-159
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• 2010

This paper presents a research result that was performed to develop a more accurate freeway crash prediction model than existing models. While the existing crash models only focus on developing crash relationships associated with highway geometric conditions found on a short section of a crash site, this research applies a different approach considering the upstream highway geometric conditions as well. Theoretically, crashes occur while motorists are in motion, and particularly at freeways vehicle speed at one specific point is very sensitive to upstream geometric conditions. Therefore, this is a reasonable approach. To form the analysis data base, this research gathers the geometric conditions of the West Seaside Freeway 269.3 km and six years crash data ranging 2003-2008 for these freeway sections. As a result, it is found that crashes fit well into Negative Binomial Distribution, and, based on the developed model, total number of crashes is inversely proportional to highway curve length and radius. Contrarily, crash occurrences are proportional to tangent length. This result is different from existing crash study results, and it seems to be resulted from this research assumption that a crash is influenced greatly by upstream geometric conditions. Also, this research provides the expected effects on crash occurrences of the length of downgrade sections, speed camera placements, and the on- and off- ramp presences. It is expected that this research result is useful for doing more reasonable highway designs and safety audit analysis, and applying the same research approach to national roads and other major roads in urban areas is recommended.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.369-379
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• 2014

The Statistical regression model has been used to construct crash prediction models, despite its limitations in assuming data distribution and functional form. In response to the limitations associated with the statistical regression models, a few studies based on non-parametric methods such as neural networks have been proposed to develop crash prediction models. However, these models have a major limitation in that they work as black boxes, and therefore cannot be directly used to identify the relationships between crash frequency and crash factors. A genetic programming model can find a solution to a problem without any specified assumptions and remove the black box effect. Hence, this paper investigates the application of the genetic programming technique to develope the crash prediction model. The data collected from the Gyeongbu expressway during the past three years (2010-2012), were separated into straight and curve sections. The random forest technique was applied to select the important variables that affect crash occurrence. The genetic programming model was developed based on the variables that were selected by the random forest. To test the goodness of fit of the genetic programming model, the RMSE of each model was compared to that of the negative binomial regression model. The test results indicate that the goodness of fit of the genetic programming models is superior to that of the negative binomial models.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.391-398
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• 2019

In general, truck-involved crashes increase severity in terms of both injury level and crash impact level. Recently, although the frequency and fatality of truck-involved crashes in Korea are rising, their associative studies are very limited. Therefore, the objective of this study is to identify critical factors influencing on injury severity of truck-involved crashes on Korean freeway system. To carry out this objective, this study uses an ordered probit model (OPM) based on a 6-year crash dataset from 2012 to 2017. From the analysis, eight variables were found to have a great effect on injury severity: older driver, crash speed, rear-end collision, number of vehicles involved, drowsy driving, nighttime (0:00 to 6:00) driving, overturn or rollover, and vehicle's fire after crash. However, injury severity was less severe in crashes under snowy condition and crashes to traffic facilities (i.e., crash alone).

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.203-215
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• 2013

PURPOSES : This study deals with first traffic violations occurred by novice drivers, which may be associated with traffic accidents. The objective of this study is to identify what kinds of drivers' characteristics influence on duration till the first traffic violation. METHODS : For the study, Survival Analysis and Cox proportional hazard model, that are usually used in the medical field, were employed. Survival Analysis was conducted to investigate whether there exist differences in survival duration by each covariate, whereas Cox proportional hazard model was used to identify significant factors that affect survival duration till novice drivers violate traffic regulations for the first time after getting a driver license. RESULTS : The results of Survival Analysis indicate that female, age (less than 21), low-frequency examinee of written exam, and non-crash involved drivers have longer duration till the first violation compared to male, greater than 21 years old, high-frequency examinee of written exam, and crash involved drivers, respectively. For the Cox proportional hazard model, license class 1 acquisitor was found to increase the survival duration till the first traffic violation was made, while male, age of 21-24, age of 25-34, age of 45-54, and crash involved drivers were more likely to reduce the survival duration. CONCLUSIONS : Absolutely, traffic violation is closely related to traffic accidents and all of the drivers should keep the traffic regulations to enhance highway safety. The results of this study might provide some insights to construct safe road environments by controlling the factors that reduce the traffic violation duration of novice drivers.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.643-660
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• 2015

The wind tunnel test of large-scale sectional model and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) are employed for the purpose of studying the aerodynamic appendices and mechanism on suppression for the vortex-induced vibration (VIV). This paper takes the HongKong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge as an example to conduct the wind tunnel test of large-scale sectional model. The results of wind tunnel test show that it is the crash barrier that induces the vertical VIV. CFD numerical simulation results show that the distance between the curb and crash barrier is not long enough to accelerate the flow velocity between them, resulting in an approximate stagnation region forming behind those two, where the continuous vortex-shedding occurs, giving rise to the vertical VIV in the end. According to the above, 3 types of wind fairing (trapezoidal, airfoil and smaller airfoil) are proposed to accelerate the flow velocity between the crash barrier and curb in order to avoid the continuous vortex-shedding. Both of the CFD numerical simulation and the velocity field measurement show that the flow velocity of all the measuring points in case of the section with airfoil wind fairing, can be increased greatly compared to the results of original section, and the energy is reduced considerably at the natural frequency, indicating that the wind fairing do accelerate the flow velocity behind the crash barrier. Wind tunnel tests in case of the sections with three different countermeasures mentioned above are conducted and the results compared with the original section show that all the three different countermeasures can be used to control VIV to varying degrees.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.95-106
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• 2012

Driver's capability of identifying the change in freeway alignments and environments is one of important factors associated with traffic safety on freeways. In particular, driver's visibility and recognition capability are highly dependent on the altitude of the sun by sunset, sunrise, and nighttime. The purpose of this study is to identify the characteristics of geometric conditions affecting crash occurrences at sunset, sunrise, and nighttime. Poisson and negative binomial regressions were adopted to predict freeway crash frequency in this study. Freeway crash data during 2007~2010 were used for developing the crash frequency models. A set of variables representing the characteristics of geometric conditions were identified as significant ones affecting crash occurrences. The results of this study would be useful in deriving effective countermeasures for preventing traffic crashes that mainly occur at sunset, sunrise, and nighttime on freeways.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.15 no.9
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• pp.5585-5593
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• 2014

This study tested the hypothesis that the significance of the heterogeneous dispersion parameter in safety performance function (SPF) used to estimate the expected crashes is affected by the endogenous heterogeneous prior distributions, and analyzed the impacts of the mis-specified dispersion parameter on the evaluation results for traffic safety countermeasures. In particular, this study simulated the Poisson means based on the heterogeneous dispersion parameters and estimated the SPFs using both the negative binomial (NB) model and the heterogeneous negative binomial (HNB) model for analyzing the impacts of the model mis-specification on the mean and dispersion functions in SPF. In addition, this study analyzed the characteristics of errors in the crash reduction factors (CRFs) obtained when the two models are used to estimate the posterior means and variances, which are essentially estimated through the estimated hyper-parameters in the heterogeneous prior distributions. The simulation study results showed that a mis-estimation on the heterogeneous dispersion parameters through the NB model does not affect the coefficient of the mean functions, but the variances of the prior distribution are seriously mis-estimated when the NB model is used to develop SPFs without considering the heterogeneity in dispersion. Consequently, when the NB model is used erroneously to estimate the prior distributions with heterogeneous dispersion parameters, the mis-estimated posterior mean can produce large errors in CRFs up to 120%.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.207-215
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• 2009

Generally, traffic accidents can be influenced by variables driving conditions including geometric, roadside design, and traffic conditions. Under the circumstance, homogeneous roadway segments were firstly identified using typical geometric variables obtained from field data collections in this study. These field data collections were conducted at highways located in several areas having various regional conditions for examples, outside metropolitan city; level and rolling rural areas. Due to many zero cells in crash database, a Zero Inflated Poisson model was used to develop crash prediction model to overestimated results in this study. It was found that EXPO, radius, grade, guardrail, mountainous terrain, crosswalk and bus-stop have statistically significant influence on vehicle to vehicle crashes at rural multi-lane roadway segments.