01557410

Component

Identifying thematic issues and Accident Prone Locations (APLs) on rural local road network is challenging because of the length and scope of the network and the spatial and temporal variability of crashes. The objective of this paper is to explore the complementarity between road safety stakeholders’ subjective point of view and the more objective identification of APLs through an Empirical Bayes (EB) method in a rural, less-dense area of Quebec, Canada. The first step of the method consists in EB analyses with a spatial database containing the accident data, the road network and several environmental attributes of the road sites. The second step is to recruit, interview and summarize systemic safety issues based on the perceptions of various stakeholders, both spatially and thematically. An application of this comparative method in a local and predominantly rural county of 23 municipalities in Quebec shed light on the usefulness of combining qualitative and quantitative data in the identification of systemic issues and possible APLs. The knowledge of the stakeholders gives an insight on the most important road safety issues, while the quantitative analyses tend to both confirm and nuance the APLs to be further investigated.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ANB10 Transportation Safety Management.

01550057

15-5108

English

16p

2015

Transportation Research Board 94th Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; References; Tables

High risk locations; Highway safety; Medium sized cities; Rural highways; Small towns; Stakeholders

Empirical Bayes method

Quebec (Canada)

Highways; Safety and Human Factors; I80: Accident Studies

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2015 Paper #15-5108

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Dec 30 2014 1:42PM