Analysis of road risk per age and gender category: a time series approach

Abstract

This paper introduces a road safety analysis for different age and gender categories of road users. In contrast with many previous studies, time series of road crashes per age and gender category will be considered. The objective of the paper is to analyze Belgian data on the yearly number of fatalities in terms of exposure and risk, in a time series perspective. For each category, a state space time series model is developed for the risk, which is defined as the number of fatalities divided by the magnitude of the population. It was found that road risk is changing over the age groups according to a U-shaped curve, and that men generally have a higher risk than women. Further, the risk is decreasing over time, but not at the same rate for all age-gender groups. The highest yearly reduction in risk is found for the oldest and youngest road users. The models are also useful to assess the attainability of formulated road safety targets, which makes them useful policy instruments. Especially for young males, the reduction in risk is not in line with Belgian and Flemish policy expectations.