Speed distribution and safety effects of license plate recognition: Analysis combining crash and toll record data in Hunan Province, China

Abstract

With the Chinese motor expressway network rapidly expanding, the number of speed-related crashes has become an alarming phenomenon. Private vehicles that cannot be identified by enforcement cameras pose a threat to highway safety, specifically on expressways where it is problematic to initiate human enforcement. The purposes of this study are to investigate the speed characteristics of vehicles with no official identification (non–ID) on expressways and to compare key variables corresponding to the effects on casualties and injury severity. Data for expressway toll records and crash statistics from the expressway network of Hunan Province, China, have been collected and analyzed. The results highlighted: (1) The means and variance of non-ID-vehicles average travel speed are both higher than their normal counterpart; (2) There are relatively higher speeding rates among non-ID vehicles than their counterparts; (3) The injury severity of non-ID vehicles involved in crashes is significantly higher than that of normal vehicles. Moreover, according to the analysis of crash severity, drivers’ improper driving conduct, namely, speeding and fatigued driving, are the fundamental causes of disastrous crashes. Summer, senior drivers, invalid license, and alcohol intake also have an adverse effect on expressway safety. Similarly, crash time (evening) negatively affects injury severity.

Keywords:

• Expressway
• non-ID vehicle
• hierarchical logistic model
• speed distribution
• injury severity

Additional information

Funding

This work was jointly supported by: (1) the Joint Research Scheme of National Natural Science Foundation of China/Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (Project No. 71561167001 & N_HKU707/15) and (2) the National Key Research and Development Plan (No. SQ2018YFB120181).