Citation

Tarko AP, DeSalle BR. Appl. Health Econ. Health Policy 2003; 2(4): 191-200.

Affiliation

Department of Civil Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA. tarko@ecn.purdue.edu

Copyright

(Copyright © 2003, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

15119538

Abstract

One of the most important tasks faced by highway agencies is identifying road hazards. Agencies use crash statistics to detect road intersections and segments where the frequency of crashes is excessive. With the crash-based method, a dangerous intersection or segment can be pointed out only after a sufficient number of crashes occur. A more proactive method is needed, and motorist complaints may be able to assist agencies in detecting road hazards before crashes occur. This paper investigates the quality of safety information reported by motorists and the effectiveness of hazard identification based on motorist reports, which were collected with an experimental Internet website. It demonstrates that the intersections pointed out by motorists tended to have more crashes than other intersections. The safety information collected through the website was comparable to 2-3 months of crash data. It was concluded that although the Internet-based method could not substitute for the traditional crash-based methods, its joint use with crash statistics might be useful in detecting new hazards where crash data had been collected for a short time.