title: Bus accident analysis of routes with/without bus priority.
abstract: This paper summarises findings on road safety performance and bus-involved accidents in Melbourne along roads where bus priority measures had been applied. Results from an empirical analysis of the accident types revealed significant reduction in the proportion of accidents involving buses hitting stationary objects and vehicles, which suggests the effect of bus priority in addressing manoeuvrability issues for buses. A mixed-effects negative binomial (MENB) regression and back-propagation neural network (BPNN) modelling of bus accidents considering wider influences on accident rates at a route section level also revealed significant safety benefits when bus priority is provided. Sensitivity analyses done on the BPNN model showed general agreement in the predicted accident frequency between both models. The slightly better performance recorded by the MENB model results suggests merits in adopting a mixed effects modelling approach for accident count prediction in practice given its capability to account for unobserved location and time-specific factors. A major implication of this research is that bus priority in Melbourne's context acts to improve road safety and should be a major consideration for road management agencies when implementing bus priority and road schemes.
authors.affiliation: Department of Civil Engineering, Building 60, Monash University, Clayton, VIC 3800, Australia. Electronic address: kelvin.goh@monash.edu.
authors.forename: Kelvin Chun Keong
authors.initials: KC
authors.lastname: Goh
authors.affiliation: Department of Civil Engineering, Building 60, Monash University, Clayton, VIC 3800, Australia. Electronic address: graham.currie@monash.edu.
authors.forename: Graham
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Currie
authors.affiliation: Department of Civil Engineering, Building 60, Monash University, Clayton, VIC 3800, Australia. Electronic address: majid.sarvi@monash.edu.
authors.forename: Majid
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sarvi
authors.affiliation: Monash University Accident Research Centre, Building 70, Monash University, Clayton, VIC 3800, Australia. Electronic address: david.logan@monash.edu.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Logan
mesh_terms: D000063:Accidents, Traffic / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence* / Q000517:prevention & control* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D016010:Binomial Distribution; D006801:Humans; D035846:Law Enforcement; D018986:Motor Vehicles / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D016571:Neural Networks, Computer; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012449:Safety / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D014739:Victoria
keywords: Back-propagation; Bus priority; Negative Binomial; Neural network; Road safety performance