Multiple Criterion Decision-Making Approach for Prioritizing Accident Hot Spots in Developing Countries in the Absence of Crash Data

In an efficient transportation system, traffic safety is an important issue and it is influenced by many factors. In a country like Iran, until now safety improvements are mainly concentrated on road engineering activities, without much attention for vehicle technology or driving behavior. One important aspect of road safety engineering activities is the so-called treatment of hotspots or dangerous accident locations. Until recently, accident hotspots were identified and remedied by the experts’ personal judgments and a hand-full of statistics without taking into account other important factors such as geometric and traffic conditions of the road network. This paper therefore aims to define and identify the criteria for accident hotspots, then giving a value to each criterion in order to develop a model to prioritize accident hotspots when traffic accident data is not available. To do this, the "Delphi" method has been adopted and a prioritization model is produced by the use of a "Multiple Criteria Decision Making" (MCDM) method. The procedure is illustrated on a collection of 20 road sections in Iran. In addition, the model is validated against an existing database of road sections containing safe locations and hotspots. Finally, a sensitivity analysis is carried out on the proposed method.