Impact of traffic Enforcement on Traffic Safety
| Date | 01 December 2017 |
| Published date | 01 December 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1461355717730836 |
| Author | Promothes Saha,Khaled Ksaibati,Mohammad Mahdi Rezapour Mashhadi |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Impact of traffic Enforcement on
Traffic Safety
Mohammad Mahdi Rezapour Mashhadi
Wyoming Technology Transfer Center, WY, USA
Promothes Saha
Wyoming Technology Transfer Center, WY, USA
Khaled Ksaibati
Wyoming Technology Transfer Center, WY, USA
Abstract
Motor vehicle crashes (MVCs) have a huge cost to society in terms of death, injury and property damage. The cost of fatal
MVCs alone is estimated at US $44 billion per year. Among many confounding factors, traffic citations as an element that
may reduce MVC frequency are not well understood, and most research carried out to date has evaluated the effects of
the total number of citations on the number of MVCs. However, certain types of citations may be more likely to reduce
the number of MVCs, whereas other types are not very effective. This research was set out to examine the impact of
different types of traffic citations on MVCs on two hazardous main US highways in Wyoming US-30 and US-26. A negative
binomial modeling technique was implemented by exploiting 4 years of crash and citations data to identify the causal
impacts of traffic citations on crash frequency by incorporating traffic and geometric features. The modeling results
showed that higher numbers of speeding and seat belt cit ations reduce the number of c rashes significantly. Th ese
findings are the results of law enforcement efforts along the hig hways. Traffic count and the number of horizontal
curves were found to significantly increase the number of MVCs.
Keywords
Traffic safety, traffic citations, type of citations, seat belt, speeding, geometry, violation, US highways, negative binomial
Submitted 06 Jun 2017, accepted 20 Aug 2017
Introduction
Reduction of the number of motor vehicle crashes (MVCs)
is a key concern for transportation engineers. MVCs result
in the deaths of 1.25 million people each year around the
world, and between 20 and 50 million more suffer non-fatal
injuries (World Health Organization (WHO), 2016). More
than 30,000 people are killed in the US each year, and
MVCs are in the top 10 causes of death for people aged
1–54. The estimated cost of MVCs resulting in fatality
alone is around US $44 billion per year in terms of work
loss and medical costs (Center for Disease Control, 2014).
Other costs are also associated with MVCs, for example,
legal and court costs, emergency service costs (EMS),
property damage, congestion costs, lost market and house-
hold productivity; these increase the total cost to US $242
billion per year (Blincoe et al., 2015).
Wyoming is one of the most rural states in the USA and,
in 2014, had a higher fatality rate (1.59 per 100 million
vehicle miles traveled (MVMT)) than the average for the
U.S. crash rate (1.08 MVMT), with most fatal MVCs
Corresponding author:
Mohammad Mahdi Rezapour Mashhadi, Wyoming Technology Transfer
Center, 1000 E. University Avenue, Department 3295, Laramie,
WY 82071, USA.
Email: mrezapou@uwyo.edu
International Journalof
Police Science & Management
2017, Vol. 19(4) 238–246
ªThe Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1461355717730836
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