An Analysis of Frederick County Crashes using VDOT Crash Tools

Summary of Major Problems

The chances of dying in a plane crash are 1 in 9821, whereas the probability of dying in a car crash is approximately 1 in 114. Motor vehicle traffic crashes are prevalent and one of the leading causes of death in the United States. Many factors can alter the reason these numbers are so high. It is not only the driver’s behavior while driving, the weather conditions, or the impairing disability that a person could have, such as age, vision impairment, etc. Roadway conditions are also a key factor; road safety is an essential issue that transportation and traffic engineers have to deal with. To ensure that everyone is safe when they leave their houses or leave from work or to school is a responsibility of everyone, not just the engineers or workers behind every road, every traffic light, every intersection but all of us.

In this report, we will analyze the crashes in Frederick County in 2019, using the VDOT Crash Tools website. We will examine the impacts by month, by weather conditions, by day of the week, by the time of day, by functional classification of the roadway, and provide information about the major crash problems in Frederick County.

There are many factors that contribute to why a crash has occurred. Attached below are some graphical representations that depict characteristics of crashes that have occurred in Frederick County. Figure 1 shows that most of the crashes (nearly 250) occurred in the  Urban Other Principal Arterial roadway classification. As seen in Figure 2, while weather conditions do not seem to have much of an impact on the crash data (almost 1000 crashes occurred with clear weather conditions), the second most prominent weather condition was rain which was responsible for nearly 100 of the crashes. Figure 3 shows crash data by month and through observation, the months of November and December are the two months where the somewhat consistent data makes a jump with over 120 crashes. Figure 4 depicts an expected diurnal cycle with the majority of crashes occurring around 5:00pm which is likely caused by the sudden influx of drivers who have ended their day of work. Figure 5 lays out the days of the week in which the crashes occurred, and from the data, Friday and Saturday are nearly identical with over 180 crashes. In summary, the majority of the crashes seem to happen on Urban Other Principal Arterial roadways with clear weather conditions, during the month of December at around 5:00pm on Fridays and Saturdays.

Conclusion

The purpose of analyzing crash data, roadway data, and exposure data is to identify safety issues and locate those that need to be solved with urgency. Crash information is essential because it analyzes the environment, human behavior, and vehicle performance that led to the cause of the accident. Using the VDOT crash tool website and examining the different graphs about what caused the crashes in Franklin County in 2019, we concluded that most crashes occurred in urban areas where the traffic is heavier. That the weather conditions, even though it could be a factor that could cause a motor vehicle accident, in this case, was not a problem. Towards the end of the year the accidents are more frequent, and that from 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM which is the peak time of traffic because everyone is trying to get home from work or school is when the most crashes happen in this county.

Below are the tables referenced in the above sections. The tables show the number of crashes in 2019 in Frederick County based on various crash characteristics.