The interurban DRAG-Spain model: The main factors of influence on road accidents in Spain

Abstract

This paper presents the results of applying DRAG methodology to the identification of the main factors of influence on the number of injury and fatal accidents occurring on Spain's interurban network. Nineteen independent variables have been included in the model grouped together under ten categories: exposure, infrastructure, weather, drivers, economic variables, vehicle stock, surveillance, speed and legislative measures. Highly interesting conclusions can be reached from the results on the basis of the different effects of a single variable on each of the accident types according to severity. The greatest influence revealed by the results is exposure, which together with inexperienced drivers, speed and an ageing vehicle stock, have a negative effect, while the increased surveillance on roads, the improvement in the technological features of vehicles and the proportion of high capacity networks have a positive effect, since the results obtained show a significant drop in accidents.

Road Investment and Traffic Safety: An International Study

“…Finally, the average annual precipitation, as a meteorological variable, is significant and has a negative sign. This relationship has been previously documented and is considered to be the result of greater driving caution in the presence of rain [51,69].…”

“…With regard to the composition of the road infrastructure, a significant negative relationship was derived for the proportion of motorways, as seen elsewhere in the literature [51,52,54,95]. Albalate and Bel [95] indicated that only a greater proportion of highways in the road network had beneficial effects in reducing mortality, while the extension of the rest of the network did not clearly affect road safety.…”

“…They also obtained significant correlations for a number of independent variables relating to exposure, weather conditions, daylight, road network, changes in accident reporting, vehicle inspection, traffic fines and alcohol consumption. Aparicio et al [51] conducted a nationwide study in Spain on the main factors affecting traffic accidents. They considered 19 variables grouped into 10 categories: exposure to risk, infrastructure (including expenditure on maintenance and conservation, and the percentage of high-capacity roads in the road network), meteorology, driver experience, economic variables, calendar, vehicle fleet, police surveillance, technological improvements in vehicles and legal changes.…”

“…Three variables are included as transport-specific factors: the proportion of motorways, the motorisation rate, and petrol consumption per vehicle. The proportion of motorways has been included in numerous studies [43,51,52,54,63], and an inverse relationship with mortality is expected, since the characteristics and quality of these roads lend themselves to higher levels of traffic safety. The motorisation index reflects, in a sense, the level of prosperity of a country.…”

“…Finally, weather conditions are widely considered in the literature as an explanatory factor for road accidents. This relationship has been documented with different effects, depending on the frequency of the data: annual, monthly, daily or even in real time [43,44,51,59,69]. Given that our analysis is conducted at the macro level with annual data, and that the most widely used meteorological parameter in the literature is rainfall [69,70], average annual rainfall is included as a variable in the model.…”