Relationship between Road Network Characteristics and Traffic Safety

Corresponding data set for Tran-SET Project No. 17ITSTSA01. Abstract of the final report is stated below for reference: "The Transportation and Capital Improvement of the City of San Antonio, Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) and other related agencies often make several efforts based on traffic data to improve safety at intersections, but the number of intersection crashes is still on the high side. There is no one size fits all solution for intersections and the City is often usually confronted with doing best value option analysis on different solutions to choose the least expensive yet more advancements. The goal of this project was to obtain the relationship between road network characteristics and public safety with a focus on intersections; perform a thorough analysis of critical intersections with high crash incidents and crash rates within the city of San Antonio, Texas, and analyze key factors that lead to crashes and recommend effective safety countermeasures. Researchers conducted the following tasks: literature review, crash data analysis, factors affecting crashes at intersections, and the development of possible solutions to some of the identified challenges. Several variables and factors were analyzed, including driver characteristics, like age and gender, road-related factors and environmental factors such as weather conditions and time of day ArcGIS was used to analyze crash frequency at different intersections, and hotspot analysis was carried out to identify high-risk intersections. The crash rates were also calculated for some intersections. The research outcome shows that there are more male drivers than female drivers involved in crashes, even though we have more licensed female drivers than male drivers. The highest number of crashes involved drivers within the age range of 15 – 34 years; this is an indication that intersection crash is one of the top threats to the young generation. The study also shows that the most common crash type is the angle crash which represents over 23% of the intersection crashes. Driver’s inattention ranked first among all the contributing factors recorded. The highrisk intersections based on crash frequency and crash rate show that the intersection along the Bandera Road and Loop 1604 is the worst in the city, with 399 crashes and 8.5 crashes per million entering vehicles. The research concluded with some suggested countermeasures, which include public enlightenment and road safety audit as a proactive means of identifying high-risk intersections."