Author(s)

F. Crocco, S. De Marco & D. W. E. Mongelli

Abstract

The current tendency is to attribute the cause of each road accident to certain factors that, closely related, define a system whose crisis points can construct serious elements of danger for road safety. The situation then becomes complex when it is impossible to attribute the cause of an accident to a sole component of the system ‘driver – vehicle – environment – infrastructure’, because more than one problem is present when investigating the path leading up to an event and it is unclear in what measure to hold the driver responsible for actions that have risked his or her own life, and in many cases, the lives of others. This is a problem that cannot be solved by assigning closed formulas when the investigation of different locations presents diverse characteristics and the variables in play can change even slightly from case to case in the same network under study. In this article, logistic regression models are proposed to evaluate the reliability of a roadway, where it is understood as a probability that a driver travels along a path in a specific period of time and in specific operative conditions, without an accident with injury or death occurring. The analysis has been conducted globally, placing in contemporaneous correlation infrastructural, environmental and behavioural components. The models have been applied to a stretch of freeway and state roads in the province of Cosenza (Italy) by defining the seriousness of the accidents that occurred. Keywords: accident, driver, environment. The Sustainable World 525 www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3541 (on-line) WIT Transactions on Ecology and the Environment, Vol 142, © 2010 WIT Press doi:

Keywords

accident, driver, environment