Application of nationwide weather data for traffic safety analysis in the United States : a spatial analysis and crash prediction modeling

There has been a wide range of scientific research to investigate the effects of adverse weather on traffic safety. In particular, some researchers have analyzed the relationship between traffic crash occurrence and weather condition in the United States using the data from land-based weather stations. Using traffic crash and weather data throughout the United States, Eisenberg (2004) analyzed the mixed effects of precipitation, and Eisenberg and Warner (2005) investigated the impact of snowfall. In addition, Ashley et al. (2015) dealt with a nationwide analysis of visibility-related fatal crashes in the United States and Black and Mote (2015) conducted a spatial and temporal analysis of winter-precipitation-related fatal crashes. Different from the previous research, this paper investigates the effective spatial coverage of nationwide land-based weather stations of the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for traffic crash analysis. Based on the effective spatial coverage, statistical models by the United States climate regions were developed to confirm whether the weather data within the coverage could be a good exposure measure for traffic crash analysis