Speed heterogeneity and accident reduction in mixed traffic.

Abstract

Various studies have investigated the relationship between speed and accidents using different definitions of speed variation. This research considers the speed in mixed traffic as heterogeneous based on the vehicle categories. This research aims to develop a traffic safety model with speed heterogeneity as expressed in accident modification factor (AMF) index. The data types include traffic data, road volumes and geometrics from 18 roads in 8 provinces in Indonesia: Central Sulawesi, Southeast Sulawesi, South Sulawesi, West Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan, NTB, NTT and Bali. The power model is adopted to model the relationship between speed changes and the number of accidents and victims. Change in paratransit speed is significant in predicting all types of AMFs, but the effects are lower than those of the other categories. Truck speed change has the highest impact of fatalities. A 10% decrease in truck speed results in a 29.9% decrease in the number of fatalities, whilst the same 10% decrease in paratransit decreases 17.4% of fatalities. The study resulted in AMF models based on the vehicle speed heterogeneity that could be used in road safety evaluation by looking at the effects of vehicle speed changes in specific categories.