Estimating the relationship between accident frequency and homogeneous and inhomogeneous traffic flows

This paper estimates the relationship between accident frequency and the traffic flow empirically treating the hourly traffic flow in two different ways, as consisting of homogenous vehicles and as consisting of cars and lorries. Rural roads in Sweden are studied using Poisson and Negative Binominal regression models. It is found that important information is lost if no consideration is taken to differences between vehicle types when estimating the marginal effect of the traffic flow. The accident rate decreases when the traffic flow is treated as if homogeneous. However, when cars are studied separately the result suggests that the accident rate is constant or increases. The result with respect to lorries is reversed, indicating a decreasing number of accidents as the number of lorries increases. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.