Influence of meteorological conditions on road accidents. A model for observations with excess zeros

Abstract

Road accidents are one of the basic road safety determinants. Most research covers large territorial areas. The results of such research do not take into account the differences between individual regions, which often leads to incorrect results and their interpretation. What makes it difficult to conduct analyses in a narrow territorial area is the small number of observations. The narrowing of the research area means that the number of accidents in time units is often very low. There are many zero observations in the data sets, which may affect the reliability of the research results. Such data are usually aggregated, which leads to information loss. The authors have therefore applied a model that addresses such problems. They proposed a method that does not require data aggregation and allows for the analysis of sets with an excess of zero observations. The presented model can be implemented in different territorial areas.