Classification of Local Governments by Road Traffic Safety Characteristics

To achieve an ambitious goal to reduce fatalities to 2,796 by 2021 as described in the 8th National Road Safety Master Plan, we need to focus on implementing appropriate traffic safety strategies for hazardous areas in the field. Because budget, time and staff are limited, decision makers of local governments are required to set up ‘target accidents’, such as an accident type that had the highest traffic fatalities last year, to reduce traffic fatalities dramatically. However, when decision makers review traffic safety levels of their local governments, it is necessary to consider not only the number of traffic fatalities but also socio-economic characteristics and traffic conditions affecting probability of traffic accidents. This paper suggests a methodology to quantify traffic safety levels of local government in a variety of views such as traffic conditions, road environments, economic levels and traffic culture in each local government. Using a mixed clustering method, the paper classifies local governments as four groups that are defined as Robust-developED Local governments (R-ED), Vulnerable-devlopED Local governments (V-ED), Robust-developING Local governments (R-ING), and Vulnerable-developING Local governments (V-ING) considering traffic safety and socio-economic characteristics. As discussed in the results in the paper, it is expected that the methodology of the paper could be used to compare and monitor traffic safety levels of local governments for decision makers.