Methods for Identifying Truck Crash Hotspots

Abstract EN

The goal of this study was to develop a new method for identifying the actual risky spots by using the geographic information system (GIS).

For this purpose, in this study, three different methods for detecting hotspots are developed, i.e., (1) the annual average daily traffic (AADT) normalization method, (2) AK crashes (A is the incapacitating crash, and K is the fatal crash) percentage method, and (3) distribution difference method.

To evaluate the performances of these three hotspot detection methods along with a baseline method that only considered the frequency of crashes, we applied these three methods to identify the top 20 hotspots for truck crashes in two representative areas in Texas.

The results indicated that (1) all three proposed methods produced more reasonable results than the baseline method, and (2) the “distribution difference” method outperformed the other methods.