AIDC project number: 1703
Guohui Zhang
Panos Prevedouros
David T.Ma
CSET and UHM
Severe traffic crashes result in considerable incapacitating injuries and fatalities, especially in Rural, Isolated, Tribal, or Indigenous (RITI) communities, which have been disadvantaged from a traffic safety perspective across the United States. For example, although rural roads constitute only 40% of Vehicle Mile Traveled (VMT), more than 50% of fatalities occur on rural roadways and about 20,000 people are killed annually in rural crashes. In Hawaii, the rural crash fatality rate was 195% higher than the urban fatality rate in 2014 and native Hawaiians or other pacific islanders are involved in about 26% of motor vehicle traffic fatalities. It is necessary to build up the comprehensive data infrastructure to enhance the ability to develop informed data-driven plans and crash injury mitigation strategies. This project aims to develop an interactive baseline crash data platform to visualize and analyze rural crash characteristics in RITI communities. This research effort will gather and leverage existing traffic accident databases and develop an online system to dynamically retrieve rural traffic crash data and graphically visualize the data for crash attribute analysis. As part of baseline crash data infrastructure establishment, the proposed data platform will enable effective traffic safety program management at all levels in RITI communities to design and implement appropriate countermeasures to mitigate rural crash severities and risks. The proposed interactive baseline crash data platform can set a solid foundation for the development of effective traffic safety policies and successful public safety campaigns to reduce traffic crash injuries and fatalities in RITI communities.
