Identification of Accident-Prone Road Sections by Using Relative Frequency Method

Ferit YAKAR
Gaziosmanpasa University Civil Engineering Department

Abstract

In this study, assuming that traffic accident occurrence is determined by some road and environment related factors, and future traffic accidents will occur under the same conditions as past traffic accidents, use of Relative Frequency Method (RFM) (also called frequency ratio method) in the determination of accident-prone road sections is investigated. Method was tested on a highway in Trabzon province of Turkey. At the end of the study, sensitivity and specificity values were calculated as 1.00 and 0.83 respectively, which reflects that the method identified all of the 'accident-prone' sections (there is no false negative) and the method has very strong ability to distinguish 'relatively safe' sections. The most useful property of the method is that, if accident data does not exist due to any reason for some part of the road, method can be still used to identify accident-prone sections by using the road properties.