This research explores the effects of some geometric and traffic characteristics at the intersection approach legs on accidents at the intersections in built-up areas in the Netherlands. This was undertaken using the SWOV accident database for the period 1994 to 2000. It comprised 502 intersections located in 31 municipalities in the Netherlands. For this research the accidents at each intersection was dis-aggregated into the approach legs from which the vehicles were travelling at the time of the accident. This resulted in 1735 approach legs. Preliminary analysis was carried out using two by two analysis with accident rate being the dependent variable and the geometric variables being the independent variables. Further analysis was carried out using a multivariate approach called Categorical Principal Components Analysis (CatPCA). The goal of CatPCA is to reduce an original set of variables into the smaller set of components that are not correlated, which represent most of the information found in the original variables. This technique is useful when large numbers of variables prohibit effective interpretation of the relationship between individual items in the data. The analysis showed that there exists no relationship between accident rate and the geometric variables in the study. It however showed that there exists a relationship between accidents and some of the geometric variables. (A)
Abstract