Presently, there is a critical need to analyze traffic accidents in order to mitigate their terrible economic and human impact. Most accidents occur in urban areas. Furthermore, driving experience has an important effect on accident analysis, since inexperienced drivers are more likely to suffer fatal injuries. This work studies the injury severity produced by accidents that involve inexperienced drivers in urban areas. The analysis was based on data provided by the Spanish General Traffic Directorate. The information root node variation (IRNV) method (based on decision trees) was used to get a rule set that provides useful information about the most probable causes of fatalities in accidents involving inexperienced drivers in urban areas. This may prove useful knowledge in preventing this kind of accidents and/or mitigating their consequences.
Keywords: data mining; decision rules; decision tree; novice drivers; road safety; severity; traffic accident.