Identifying Spatial Patterns of Road Accidents in Madaba City by Applying Getis-Ord Gi* Spatial Statistic

Abstract

Road safety has become a subject of great interest among policymakers worldwide as they seek effective strategies to mitigate traffic accidents. There exist various approaches to examine the occurrences of road traffic accidents in terms of their spatial information and consequences. Geographical information systems (GIS) have been widely employed to analyse the spatial patterns of road traffic accidents; they offer various statistical analysis tools to reveal the hotspot locations of road accidents. Reducing the number of traffic accidents and overcoming their negative impact by defining the hotspot locations gain serious attention from the Public Security Directorate (PSD) in Jordan. This study analyses road traffic accidents in Madaba City using spatial statistics to determine the hotspot locations. The Gtis-Ord (Gi*) spatial statistics method was applied to 5730 reported traffic accidents between 2017 and 2019. The results accurately located the groups of chosen accidents and identified 37 hotspots, accounting for 1.89% of the reported cases. The Maximum Z score was 30.99, and 691 reported cases led to the identification of 13 high-priority hotspots. These hotspots occur at significant thoroughfares, busy roundabouts, and uncontrolled intersections. Driving errors and excessive speeding were the most common causes of fatal and non-fatal accidents in Madaba City. Efficient countermeasures to mitigate the number of accidents in Madaba City include adding more police inspectors to the city center, installing speed cameras, and putting up traffic signs at uncontrolled intersections. The outcomes of this work may encourage the PSD to adopt the GIS statistical tools in analyzing the spatial patterns of road traffic accidents to achieve more accurate results.