Simulation Study of the Effect of Decreasing Truck Traffic Flow on Safety on Almeria-Barcelona Corridor

In this paper the effect of truck traffic on road safety has been analyzed through simulation study. The main objective of the study is to quantify the effect of the decreasing average annual daily traffic of heavy duty vehicles (trucks) on road safety. As the road safety indicators the frequency road accidents is considered. The data used in the study were collected from one of the most crowded routes in Spain which connects Almeria (south-east) with Barcelona (northeast). The observed data covers year 2010 and were classified into 2 road types: dual carriageways and toll roads. The estimation was carried out using negative binomial model and Markov Chain Monte Carlo simulation. Using the estimation results new traffic scenarios were proposed where the traffic flow is assumed to change its values. A total of 33 scenarios were proposed and new accidents data were generated through MCMC sampling. The comparison of the simulated and observed accident data shows that the effect of decreasing truck traffic flow could meliorate road safety in the route. The simulation tool could be applied to evaluate the effects of freight modal shift from road to rail. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4995/CIT2016.2016.4214

[1]  M. Livneh,et al.  Relationships between road accidents and hourly traffic flow -- i. analyses and interpretation , 1983 .

[2]  Mohamed Abdel-Aty,et al.  Using hierarchical Bayesian binary probit models to analyze crash injury severity on high speed facilities with real-time traffic data. , 2014, Accident; analysis and prevention.

[3]  Chris Hendrickson,et al.  Assessing the energy and greenhouse gas emissions mitigation effectiveness of potential US modal freight policies , 2012 .

[4]  Bahar Dadashova,et al.  Explanatory and prediction power of two macro models. An application to van-involved accidents in Spain , 2014 .

[5]  G Chen,et al.  Evaluation of photo radar program in British Columbia. , 2000, Accident; analysis and prevention.

[6]  Chao Wang,et al.  The effect of traffic and road characteristics on road safety: A review and future research direction , 2013 .

[7]  I. Thomas.  Spatial data aggregation: exploratory analysis of road accidents. , 1996, Accident; analysis and prevention.

[8]  Jean-Louis Martin,et al.  Relationship between crash rate and hourly traffic flow on interurban motorways. , 2002, Accident; analysis and prevention.

[9]  Mircea-Paul Andreescu,et al.  Weather and traffic accidents in Montreal, Canada , 1998 .

[10]  R Kulmala,et al.  Measuring the contribution of randomness, exposure, weather, and daylight to the variation in road accident counts. , 1995, Accident; analysis and prevention.

[11]  B Arenas Ramírez,et al.  The influence of heavy goods vehicle traffic on accidents on different types of Spanish interurban roads. , 2009, Accident; analysis and prevention.

[12]  Nicholas J Garber,et al.  Incorporating Crash Risk in Selecting Congestion-Mitigation Strategies: Hampton Roads Area (Virginia) Case Study , 2001 .

[13]  Moshe Livneh,et al.  Relationships between road accidents and hourly traffic flow—I: Analyses and interpretation , 1982 .

[14]  Fred L Mannering,et al.  A note on modeling vehicle accident frequencies with random-parameters count models. , 2009, Accident; analysis and prevention.

[15]  Dominique Lord,et al.  Modeling crash-flow-density and crash-flow-V/C ratio relationships for rural and urban freeway segments. , 2005, Accident; analysis and prevention.