Temporal Stability Analysis of Lighting Conditions in Traffic Accidents

Abstract

Different lighting conditions can result in accidents of different levels of severity. However, current studies lack the consideration of the heterogeneity and temporal stability of accident data under various lighting conditions. Therefore, three years’ worth of data were used to investigate the critical factors of accident severity. The random parameters logit model was employed to investigate the influence of different lighting conditions on temporal stability and heterogeneity. The critical factors affecting injury severity were also identified. The temporal stability and transferability of the models were investigated by a series of likelihood ratio tests. Based on different lighting conditions (daylight conditions, and night-time conditions with street lighting on), six models were established. Three kinds of accident injury severity levels were classified: property damage only (PDO), severe injury (SI), and fatal injury (FI). The estimation results showed contributing factors of accident severity were significantly different between the two kinds of lighting conditions. Additionally, accidents showed temporal instability. The proposed method can provide a guide for infrastructure construction, operation, and maintenance in traffic-safety management.

Keywords

• traffic safety
• unobserved heterogeneity
• temporal stability
• random parameters logit model