Influence of Weather Conditions on Fatal Road Accidents on Highways and Urban and Rural Roads in Romania

This paper investigates the relationship between different weather conditions and the monthly road traffic accidents (Nacc) that caused injuries and fatalities between 2011 and 2014 on the Romanian highways and urban and rural roads. The monthly average temperatures (MAT) and precipitation amounts (MAPA) and other weather factors influencing the road environment and drivers are also taken into account on a monthly basis: sleet, snow, ice storm, rain showers, showers rain, mixed precipitation, snow storm, wind intensification, fog, rime, glazed frost, hoar frost and drizzle. Multiple linear regressions have been applied and tests on both their global significance and individual meanings of the explanatory variables’ coefficients have been conducted. MAT and rain showers are partly correlated with Nacc and the fatalities produced in urban and rural areas. This paper shows that in case of increasing MAT with 1 °C, this will lead to an increase of 2.42 % of the Nacc. As this is the first research having been done on this topic in Romania, a surprising conclusion was that MAPA do not explain Nacc at all, fact that is not in line with the other studies’ findings showing a relevant influence of the precipitation on the traffic accidents.