Relationship between road traffic accidents and conflicts recorded by drive recorders

Objective: Road traffic conflicts can be used to estimate the probability of accident occurrence, assess road safety, or evaluate road safety programs if the relationship between road traffic accidents and conflicts is known. To this end, we propose a model for the relationship between road traffic accidents and conflicts recorded by drive recorders (DRs). Methods: DRs were installed in 50 cars in Beijing to collect records of traffic conflicts. Data containing 1366 conflicts were collected in 193 days. The hourly distributions of conflicts and accidents were used to model the relationship between accidents and conflicts. To eliminate time series and base number effects, we defined and used 2 parameters: average annual number of accidents per 10,000 vehicles per hour and average number of conflicts per 10,000 vehicles per hour. A model was developed to describe the relationship between the two parameters. Results: If A _i = average annual number of accidents per 10,000 vehicles per hour at hour i, and E _i = average number of conflicts per 10,000 vehicles per hour at hour i, the relationship can be expressed as (α > 0, β > 0). The average number of traffic accidents increases as the number of conflicts rises, but the rate of increase decelerates as the number of conflicts increases further. Conclusions: The proposed model can describe the relationship between road traffic accidents and conflicts in a simple manner. According to our analysis, the model fits the present data.