Analyzing Crash Clusters near Senior Destination Sites Using GIS

Roadway crashes claim more than 30,000 lives each year in the United States, and they continue to affect the lives of people adversely. This problem becomes even more challenging when aging populations are considered due to their vulnerability and fragility to crashes. This is especially a principal concern in Florida since the crash risk for the aging population is increasing day by day, proportional to the population growth of aging Floridians. This study investigates the spatial and temporal patterns of aging-involved crashes to identify aging related crash hotspots, using Geographical Information Systems (GIS)-based methods on a case study of ten urban counties in Florida. The counties were selected based on the high aging-involved crash rates, as identified by the Safe Mobility for Life Coalition of Florida. Both different spatial and temporal methods were employed. Among the methods studied, SANET, a network distance-based kernel density estimation method, was identified as a very effective tool in providing an unbiased distribution of the crashes by calculating the actual distances between the crashes over the roadway network. GIS-based results were also supported with a binary logistic regression analysis to identify the significant factors affecting aging-involved crash occurrence when compared to other age group crashes. Results indicate that high risk locations for aging-involved crashes show different spatial and temporal patterns than those for other age groups. These pattern specific differences include the following: (a) Intersections have an adverse effect on the 65+ populations more than other adult age groups, and the locations of high crash risk intersections are different than those of other age groups, (b) Aging-involved population crashes occur during the mid-day rather than the peak hours, which is not a similar pattern for other adult age groups, especially for the working populations, and (c) Week days have more aging-involved crashes than the weekends contrary to the other age group crashes.

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Completed
• Funding: $96700.00
• Contract Numbers:

  DTRT13-G-UTC42

  03317-34490

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Research and Innovative Technology Administration

  University Transportation Centers Program
  1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Project Managers:

  Tucker-Thomas, Dawn

• Performing Organizations:

  Center for Accessibility and Safety for an Aging Population

  Florida State University
  Tallahassee, FL  United States 
• Principal Investigators:

  Sando, Thobias

• Start Date: 20140109
• Expected Completion Date: 20141223
• Actual Completion Date: 20160229
• Source Data: RiP Project 36870

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Aged drivers; Crashes; Geographic information systems; High risk locations; Prevention; Safety; Strategic planning
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01530634
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Center for Accessibility and Safety for an Aging Population
• Contract Numbers: DTRT13-G-UTC42, 03317-34490
• Files: UTC, RIP
• Created Date: Jul 23 2014 1:01AM