Investigation and modeling of road factors on traffic accidents on highways

The increase in the world population and the development of technology have led to an increase in the number of vehicles and traffic accidents. Increasing traffic accidents cause material and moral losses. Driver error, vehicle defects, negative effects of the environment, geometric and physical defects of the road cause traffic accidents. After the causes are determined with proper methods, the number and severity of accidents can be reduced with the measures taken. It has been observed that the rate of road defects that cause traffic accidents in our country in 2020 is 0.27%, and this rate has not changed much in previous years. However, according to studies conducted in the USA and some European Union countries, it has been observed that the accident rates caused by road factors vary by 2-3%, and this rate increases to 30% with the interaction of driver and vehicle defects. In the first part of this study, to determine the reason for this rate difference between Turkey and other countries, the accident reports of other countries and the relevant laws were examined by comparison method. As a result of this examination, it has been concluded that the accident reports in Turkey only consider the surface defects of the road and the reports are not prepared to understand the cause of the accidents due to road defects. In the second part of this study, the road factor affecting traffic accidents in Turkey year, ton-km, total population, the total number of accidents, the total road length, the total number of vehicles, total parquet, crushed stone/stabilized, bituminous hot pavement and unpaved of road lengths were modeled with artificial neural network method by taking data input. Among the 5 models created, Model 4 was found to be the most successful model, with a regression coefficient of 0.97. According to the results of Model 4, in order of importance of road defects rates in Turkey; has been concluded that the number of accidents is related to the total road length, population, and year factors.