Multivariate random parameter Tobit modeling of crashes involving aging drivers, passengers, bicyclists, and pedestrians: Spatiotemporal variations

Abstract

The increase in 65 years and older population in the United States compels the investigation of the crashes involving all aging (65+) roadway users (drivers, passengers, bicyclists, and pedestrians) in order to ensure their safety. As such, the objective of this research is to provide a spatiotemporal comparative investigation of the crashes involving these aging roadway users in Florida via concurrently using the same set of predictors in order to obtain comparable findings among them. First, a new metric, namely Crash Rate Difference (CRD) approach is developed, which enables one to capture potential spatial and temporal (e.g., weekend and weekday) variations in crash rates of aging user-involved crashes. Second, a multivariate random parameter Tobit model is utilized to determine the factors that drive both the crash occurrence probability and the crash rate of 65+ roadway users, accounting for the unobserved heterogeneity. Findings show that there are statistically significant heterogeneous effects of predictors on the crash rates of different roadway users, which evidences the unobserved heterogeneity across observations. Results also indicate that the presence of facilities such as hospitals, religious facilities, or supermarkets is very influential on crash rates of 65+ roadway users, advocating that roadways around these facilities should be particularly scrutinized by road safety stakeholders. Interestingly, the effect of these facilities on crashes also differs significantly between weekdays and weekends. Moreover, the roadway segments with high crash rates vary temporally depending on whether it is a weekday or a weekend. These findings regarding the spatiotemporal variations clearly indicate the need to develop and design better traffic safety measures and plans addressing these specific roadway segments, which can be tailored to alleviate traffic safety problems for 65+ roadway users.

Keywords: Aging bicyclists and pedestrians; Bayesian inference; Crash rate difference; Multivariate random parameter Tobit model; Population factor; Spatiotemporal variations.