An Exploratory Computational Piecewise Approach to Characterizing and Analyzing Traffic Accident Data

In spite of the many advancementsinsafety technology, roadway design and engineering as well as several policy initiativesaimed at addressingtraffic crashes (and it concomitant injuries and fatalities); it continuesto saddle humanity and present significant health hazards and threats to the socio-economic wellbeing of the inhabitants of this earth. Even though federal and state transportation engineers, policy makers, planners and researchers have spent large sums of money and effort on this complex and ubiquitous problem, traffic crashes is one of the top causes of fatal and non-fatal injuries in the United States. In this work a piecewise approach was used to perform an exploratory,systemic characterization and analysis of the six-year (2008- 2013) traffic crash data from North Dakota to discover the nature, peculiarities and trends in the data.Several important features and trends in the data were discovered and the outcome of this paper can be further used for engineering design, planning and policy analysis. The research approach could be duplicated in any other state to enhance its societal benefits. Heterogeneity and uncertainty will be fully addressed in future work.