A Model for Predicting Schoolchildren Accidentsin the Vicinity of Rural Roadsbased on Geometric Design and Traffic Conditions

Students are among the most vulnerable road users because of their age, physical characteristics and the scale ofawareness they gain from their surroundings. Recent statistics indicate that pedestrians are involved in about 40percent of fatalities in rural areas of Iran. Meanwhile, about 29 percent of pedestrian fatalities were under 18 yearsold. Based on the fact that almost two million Iranian students study in the vicinity of rural roads, this paper aims todevelop a model for predicting the risk of students’ accidents near the aforementioned schools. Therefore, by gatheringdata from schools located in rural areas, schools are divided in three categories as follows: no risk (no accidents/year), medium risk (one accident/year), and high risk (two or more accidents/year). A multinomial logit (MNL) modelhas been chosen and the utility function was considered as a combination of variables such as road width, functionalspeed, presence of school guardian, number of students and the ratio of average daily traffic to the distance of schoolsfrom roads. Results indicate that the proposed model can predict the risk of accident occurrence with the accuracy ofmore than 70 percent. Meanwhile, school guardian is known as an important variable in the prediction model. Also,results show the important role of the road width and proposed ADT/Dis variables.

Keywords:

Students’ accidents , schools in the vicinity of roads , accident prediction model , multinomial logit , school guardian