Accident Analysis and Prevention 178 (2022) 106848

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Accident Analysis and Prevention

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/aap

Developing a new real-time traffic safety management framework for urban

expressways utilizing reinforcement learning tree
Kui Yang a, *, Mohammed Quddus b, Constantinos Antoniou a
a
TUM School of Engineering and Design, Technical University of Munich, Arcisstraße 21, 80333 Munich, Germany
b
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Imperial College London, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: One of the main objectives of an urban traffic control system is to reduce the crash frequency and the loss caused
Urban expressways by these crashes on urban expressways. Real-time crash risk prediction (RTCRP) is an essential technique to
Traffic safety identify crash precursors so as to take proactive measures to smooth traffic fluctuations. In addition, automatic
Real-time crash risk prediction
incident detection (AID) is another important approach to timely detect an incident so as to design counter­
Automatic crash detection
Reinforcement learning tree
measures that reduce any negative impacts on traffic dynamics. With the introduction of disruptive technologies
in transport, highly disaggregated large datasets have started to emerge for modelling while existing modelling
techniques utilized in RTCRP and AID may not be able to accurately predict traffic crashes in real-time.
Therefore, this paper proposes a state-of-the-art reinforcement learning tree (RLT) approach to develop
RTCRP model and automatic crash detection (ACD) model similar to AID, and further utilizes it to build a real-
time traffic safety management framework for urban expressways with the input of online traffic data streaming.
Recorded traffic flow data and historical crash data were extracted and integrated to develop and implement
both RTCRP models and ACD models. The prediction results were compared with the frequently used logistic
regression (LR), support vector machine (SVM) and deep neural network (DNN) and a sensitivity analysis for
variable effects was conducted. The results confirm that RLT outperforms LR, SVM and DNN in developing
RTCRP and ACD models. At the cost of 10% false-alarm rate, about 96% of the crashes were predicted or detected
correctly by the proposed framework. The results also indicate that: i) collecting more data is helpful to improve
the predictive performance and approximatively a minimum sample size of 20 observations per variable is
reasonable for training RLT models; and ii) obtaining more factors is beneficial to improve the predictive per­
formance. With the RLT approach, it was demonstrated that selected important variables also have the capability
to provide reasonable predictive performance.

1. Introduction recently become important research topics. The overall purpose of

There are around 3,700 traffic fatalities per day on the roads around
the world and the traffic safety problem has been deteriorating over time
(World Health Organization, 2018). Additionally, road traffic crashes
cause millions of severe injuries and result in a loss of 3 % of gross do­
mestic products (GDP) in most countries (World Health Organization,
2018). With the wide use of traffic detection devices and the techno­
logical advances in data storage and data mining, real-time collection of
traffic flow data has been possible. This facilitates to detect unstable
traffic dynamics and traffic incidents in real-time lead to proactive
traffic safety management. Therefore, studies related to real-time crash
risk prediction (RTCRP) and automatic incident detection (AID) have
RTCRP is to predict the probability of crash occurrence in advance or in
real-time via a calibrated model and to identify the crash-prone traffic
conditions for a proactive traffic management system (Yang et al., 2019;
Hossain et al., 2019). Moreover, the goal of AID is to identify the inci­
dent occurrence on a road network by analyzing the changing of the
traffic flow characteristics (Masters et al., 1991) so as to reduce impacts
of incidents, both in terms of throughput and safety.
In existing studies, many artificial intelligence techniques and
traditional statistical models have been applied to develop models for
real-time crash risk prediction (RTCRP) and automatic incident detec­
tion (AID). Although they can achieve the reasonable prediction accu­
racy, the performance of these models can further be enhanced by

* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: kui.yang@tum.de (K. Yang), m.quddus@imperial.ac.uk (M. Quddus), c.antoniou@tum.de (C. Antoniou).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2022.106848
Received 19 May 2022; Received in revised form 21 August 2022; Accepted 15 September 2022
Available online 26 September 2022
0001-4575/© 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
K. Yang et al.
utilizing more advanced modelling techniques. In addition, the gener­
alized definition of incidents is any non-recurring event that causes a
reduction of roadway capacity or an abnormal increase in demand, such
as traffic crashes, disabled vehicles, spilled cargoes and debris, special
events, or any other event that significantly affects roadway operations
(Mandzuka et al., 2011). Similarly, this paper focuses on automatic
crash detection (ACD) to detect the crash occurrence since only crash
cases are included in our dataset. Note that a crash in this paper is
defined as the collision of one motor vehicle with other vehicle (s).
This paper is, therefore, to apply the reinforcement learning tree
(RLT), which is a state-of-the-art reinforcement learning based
approach, to formulate real-time crash risk prediction (RTCRP) and
automatic crash detection (ACD) models. By taking advantage of rein­
forcement learning in the tree construction processes and the variable
muting procedure, RLT has significantly improved performance
compared to state-of-the-art methods (i.e. support vector machines and
deep neural network), especially when the true model structure is sparse
and the dimension is high (Zhu et al., 2015).
For the purpose of employing reinforcement learning tree (RLT) to
develop both RTCRP and ACD models, recorded traffic flow data and
historical crash data from urban expressways in Shanghai, China were
combined based on a matched case-control design and then divided into
training data and test data. The training data was used to identify the
important variables with the use of RLT and then to develop the RTCRP
and ACD models. The prediction performance of models was evaluated
by the test data. A comparison with two state-of-the-art classification
models was made by using the performance measure – the area under
ROC curves (AUC). In addition, some model explorations related to the
application of RLT were conducted, including RLT prediction perfor­
mance in a small sample environment, the impact of variable selections,
and the validation by the full dataset, and a sensitivity analysis. Finally,
a traffic safety management framework based on RLT for urban ex­
pressways with real-time traffic data streaming was developed.
2. Related work
2.1. Real-time crash risk prediction studies
Given the technical improvement of traffic flow monitoring and data
analysis, the traffic flow data from traffic monitoring devices (e.g.,
traffic inductive-loop detectors, camera, microwave radar, etc.) are
applied to analyze the traffic flow characteristics, crash characteristics
etc. Since the beginning of this century, numerous studies have applied
various statistical models or machine leaning methods to identify crash
factors, to investigate the relationship between the crash risk and pa­
rameters of traffic flow, to reveal crash mechanisms and to further
predict real-time crash risk, e.g., Abdel-Aty and Pemmanaboina, 2006;
Zheng et al., 2010; Yu and Abdel-Aty, 2013; Wang et al., 2015; Basso
et al., 2018; Yang et al., 2018, 2019. For instance, Yang et al. (2019)
proposed a recurrent neural network (RNN) to conduct the model
development of the real-time crash risk prediction. It found that RNN
outperformed the logistic regression model and support vector machine
(SVM), since RNN can update its own parameters via a time sequence,
which improves its adaptability for traffic dynamics with the spa­
tial–temporal variability. Abdel-Aty et al. (2004) adopted a matched
case-control logistic regression model to develop crash likelihood pre­
diction models based on the underground sensor data and crash data.
Zheng et al. (2010) also used a matched case-control design to develop a
case-control sample including crash cases and non-crash cases from
high-resolution traffic and crash data from a freeway segment. It
employed a conditional logistic regression model to explore how traffic
oscillations affects traffic safety. Yu and Abdel-Aty (2013) investigated
the application of SVM in the model development of RTCRP. The results
found that the SVM model based on radial kernel functions had better
prediction performance than Bayesian logistic regression model. Xu
et al. (2015) employed Bayesian meta-analysis and Bayesian inference
2
Accident Analysis and Prevention 178 (2022) 106848
approach to develop RTCRP models with the help of a limited dataset. It
found that compared with the model trained by the limited data, meta-
regression could improve the prediction performance significantly.
Exploring RTCRP modelling techniques with the good prediction
performance is one of the most important research points. For example,
deep learning technique (e.g., Huang et al., 2020; Basso et al., 2021) and
its improvements such as deep generative models (Cai et al., 2020), long
short-term memory convolutional neural network (LSTM) (Yuan et al.,
2019), LSTM convolutional neural network (LSTM-CNN) (Li et al., 2020)
and convolutional neural networks (Yu et al., 2020) were employed to
develop crash risk prediction models. They have achieved the good
performance. In addition to the freeway and urban expressways, some
researchers focus on ramps (e.g., Wang et al., 2019), signalized in­
tersections (e.g., Zheng and Sayed, 2020; Yuan et al., 2020) and arterials
(e.g., Li et al., 2020) for the RTCRP studies, including investigating the
development and transferability of the real-time safety performance
models of signalized intersections (Essa et al., 2019), extreme value
analysis for RTCRP at signalized intersections (Zheng and Sayed, 2020;
Fu and Sayed, 2022), self-learning adaptive signal control optimization
for real-time safety (Essa and Sayed, 2020), evaluation and quantifica­
tion of the importance of flow composition in RTCRP (Basso et al.,
2020), modeling real-time cycle-level crash risk based on high-
resolution event-based data (Yuan et al., 2020), and etc. Except as
traditional traffic flow data, some new data types such as vehicle-by-
vehicle data (Basso et al., 2022) and floating car trajectory data
(Wang et al., 2019), are applied to conduct RTCRP studies. For instance,
Ali et al. (2022) used a driving simulator to collect trajectory data to
quantify mandatory lane-changing crash risk in the traditional and
connected environments by employing an extreme value theory
approach. It proved that the connected environment could significantly
reduce mandatory lane-changing crash risk compared with traditional
environments. After obtaining the crash risk, the reinforcement learning
technique is used to develop intelligent interventions for real-time
proactive road safety management, such as reinforcement learning-
based variable speed limits (VSL) control framework (Li et al., 2020;
Roy et al., 2022), multi-objective reinforcement learning approach for
adaptive traffic signal control intersections (Gong et al., 2020), and
combined variable speed limit and lane change guidance based on
distributed deep reinforcement learning (Peng and Xu, 2021). For
instance, Roy et al. (2022) used the reinforcement learning algorithm to
develop VSL for proposing a proactive road safety management system
including a RTCRP model. The simulation experiment proved that this
proposed real-time system could reduce the crash risk by 19 %.
Hossain et al. (2019) discussed the development pathways, chal­
lenges and ubiquitous requirements of a universal RTCRP model from
existing literature. It clarified that the model prediction ability is still
one of the most important challenges from the concept of RTCRP tech­
niques to the real-world implementation of an active traffic safety
management system. Therefore, this paper aims to explore new
modelling methods in the model development of RTCRP with higher
prediction performance.
2.2. Automatic incident detection
In the 1970s, there were some studies that investigate the incident
detection on roads. For example, Dudek et al. (1974) developed an
automatic incident detection model with the help of the standard normal
deviation of the control variable (energy or lane occupancy) on urban
freeways in 1974. Incident detection was an important research hotspot
in transportation fields. So far, various models and methods have been
introduced to detect incidents quickly to help traffic managers to take
measures quickly to further reduce the impact of incidents on traffic flow
and drivers, e.g., neural networks (Dia and Rose, 1997; Samant and
Adeli, 2001), wavelet technique (Teng and Qi, 2003), time-series anal­
ysis techniques (Ahmed and Cook, 1982), Bayesian network (Zhang and
Taylor, 2006), support vector machine (SVM) (Xiao, 2019), generative
K. Yang et al.
adversarial networks (Lin et al., 2020), hybrid deep learning model (Li
et al., 2020), partial least squares regression (Wang et al., 2008), and
probabilistic topic model (Kinoshita et al., 2015). For instance, Lin et al.
(2020) firstly used generative adversarial networks (GANs) to solve the
issue of an imbalanced and small sample due to the scarcity of incident
samples and then developed an incident detection framework. This
framework firstly identified important factors with the help of random
forests, and then used GANs to generate new incident samples, and
finally applied a SVM to develop the traffic incident detection model. It
found that their framework had good performance with respect to low
false alarm rate and high detection rate in detecting traffic incidents.
Similar to Lin et al. (2020), for the purpose of dealing with the small data
size and imbalanced datasets, Li et al. (2020) employed a hybrid deep
learning model to develop incident detection models. This proposed
hybrid models firstly used GAN to balance data and expand the data size,
and then applied a deep learning model to develop the traffic incident
detection model.
In recent years, some new data have been applied to detect traffic
incidents, e.g., social media data (Gu et al., 2016; Salas et al., 2017), on-
board GPS data (Asakura et al., 2017), and bluetooth detection data
(Margreiter, 2016). For instance, Gu et al. (2016) explored to extract
incident occurrence information on highways and arterials by mining
tweet texts, which was proved to be a cheap and efficient alternative.
Asakura et al. (2017) investigated how to use floating data from probe
vehicles with global positioning system (GPS) devices to detect traffic
incidents. Additionally, Asakura et al. (2017) also analyzed the char­
acteristics of traffic flow dynamics during incidents.
Similar to real-time crash risk prediction, the detection ability of
automatic incident detection models and automatic crash detection is
still a research interest. Therefore, this paper focuses on new modelling
methods to develop more accurate crash detection models similar to
incident detection models.
3. Methodology and data preparation
3.1. Methodology
In this part, reinforcement learning tree and evaluation criteria are
briefly described. The reinforcement learning tree is used to develop
models that predict the crash risk and detect the crash occurrence while
the evaluation criteria were utilized to appraise the model performance.
3.1.1. Reinforcement learning tree
The reinforcement learning tree (RLT), which was firstly proposed by
Zhu et al. (2015), is a tree-based regression model. Basically, it is a
random forest model with the implementation of reinforcement learning
in splitting variable selection and noise variable muting at each internal
node (Zhu et al., 2015). It should be noted that the selection of splitting
variables and constructing daughter nodes are the key elements of RLT.
In the step of selecting splitting variables, the mechanism is to try to
obtain the biggest return of the long-term performance from future child
splits, and it is helpful to beak hidden structure and then avoid incon­
sistency. In the step of constructing daughter nodes, muting some noise
variables is employed, especially at the deeper part of the tree, and RLT
can still identify the strong variables. Additionally, RLT can provide
linear combination rules for splits to obtain more efficiency.
Table 1 provides the steps in developing the RLT algorithm (Zhu
et al., 2015). We observe a sample whose observations are D = {(X1 ,Y1 ),
T
(X2 , Y2 ), ⋯, (Xn , Yn )}, where each Xi = (Xi1 , ⋯, Xik ) denotes the traffic
flow variables (e.g., speed, volume) and it is a set of k variables from a
feature space X. Y is the binary variable as the output in the model and it
has values of 1 for a crash case or 0 for a non-crash case. The expected
value E(Y|X) is calculated based on the set of k1 strong variables and
here k1 < k. In addition, the other k2 variables (k2 = k − k1 ) are noise
variables. The aim of training is to obtain the estimate in function f(x) =
3
Accident Analysis and Prevention 178 (2022) 106848
Table 1
Calculation steps of reinforcement learning trees.
1. Select T bootstrap samples from the whole dataset D.
2. For the t − th bootstrap sample, where t ∈ {1,2,⋯,T}, fit one RLT model ft , and the
rules and steps are:
i. For any internal node B, fit an embedded model fB to the training data in B,
restricted to the set of k1 strong variables {1, 2, ⋯, k}.
ii. Using fB to calculate the variable importance measure VIB (j) for each variable Xj ,
where j ∈ k.
iii. Split node B into two children nodes with the help of the variables with the highest
variable importance measure.
iv. Update the muted noise variables for the two children nodes by adding the
variable who has the lowest variable importance at the current node.
v. Apply i)–iv) on each child node to make sure that node sample size is smaller than a
pre-specified value nmin .
∑
3. Average T trees to obtain a final model f = I(0.5 < T− 1 Tt=1 ft ) for the classification
purpose.
E(Y|X = x) for the future predictions and classifications.
3.1.2. Evaluation criterion
In this paper, three indicators were used as criteria to estimate and
compare the performance. They are the area under the Receiver Oper­
ating Characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC), the false positive rate and the
true positive rate. This ROC curve has become the commonly used tool
to assess predictive accuracy for evaluating and comparing algorithms,
models or technologies that produce the classifications and predictions.
The false positive rate is used as x-axis and true positive rate is used as y-
axis to plot the ROC curve. AUC has a value between 0.5 and 1.0, and it
can present the prediction performance of models. If the AUC is big, the
prediction performance of models is better (e.g., Yu and Abdel-Aty,
2013; Yang et al., 2019).
The formulas of false positive rate and true positive rate are:
FP
False positive rate =
FP + TN
TP
True positive rate =
TP + FN
where FP is the number of non-crashes that fail to be classified
correctly,TN is the number of non-crashes that are successfully classified
into the non-crash group, TP refers to the number of crashes that are
classified correctly into the crash group, and FN refers to the number of
crashes incorrectly classified into the non-crash group.
3.2. Data preparation
The studied area is the urban expressway in Puxi area of Shanghai,
China and it includes six elevated roads (see Fig. 1). It should be noted
that there are no intersections in the urban expressway system. Its length
is 236 km and it is separated artificially into 238 roadway segments by
the on/off ramps in two directions (see Yang at al. (2018b) for details).
The number of lanes of road segments varies from two to six. The per­
centage of two, three, four, five and six lanes are 26.9 %, 31.1 %, 33.6 %,
8.0 % and 0.4 %, respectively. Two datasets from this studied area were
integrated: (i) real-time traffic flow data collected by dual loops de­
tectors (LDs) under the road surface of elevated roads, and (ii) historical
crash data in April 2014. Note that a crash in this paper is defined as the
collision of one motor vehicle with other vehicle (s). Fig. 2 illustrates the
descriptive statistics of the incident types. A total of 2,165 incidents
occurred on the studied corridor in April 2014, including 658 break-
down incidents (i.e., 30.4 %), 15 single-vehicle crashes (i.e., off-road
single-vehicle crashes, 0.7 %), 1,271 two-vehicle crashes (i.e., 58.7 %)
and 141 multi-vehicle crashes (i.e., 6.5 %) and 80 other incidents (i.e.,
3.7 %, e.g., cargo drops and catching fire). LDs data provides average
speed, counts of vehicles, and time occupancy for every lane at every 20
s. We calculated the mean and standard deviation of volume, speed, and
K. Yang et al. Accident Analysis and Prevention 178 (2022) 106848

Fig. 1. Shanghai urban expressway network (Puxi area) (Yang at al., 2018b).

time occupancy respectively based on the data aggregation at 5 min
intervals for each roadway segment. The reason why a 5 min time in­
terval is employed as the time window is that an optimal temporal ag­
gregation interval of 5 min can reduce the random noise of the traffic
flow monitoring data for urban roads (Lu et al., 2012), like most of
previous studies (e.g., Abdel-Aty et al., 2010; Yu and Abdel-Aty, 2013;
Sun et al., 2014; Xu et al., 2016; Yang et al., 2018a, 2018b; Basso et al.,
2018).

4
K. Yang et al.
Fig. 2. Descriptive statistics of incident types.
3.2.1. Real-time crash risk prediction
In order to predict the likelihood of a crash occurrence in advance,
we extracted the traffic flow data on related roadway segments between
5 and 10 min before the reporting time of the crash occurrence (see
Fig. 3). Besides, three segments around the crash location, i.e. upstream,
crash and downstream, were identified and termed as U segment, C
segment and D segment, respectively. For example, if a crash occurred at
13:32, we extracted traffic flow data from 13:22 to 13:27 (i.e. 5 min
window) and named it as “BeforeCrash” (BC). Since the location the
crash occurrence is described by using the unique number of roadway
segments, we firstly used ArcMap (ESRI, 2006) to identify the spatial
relationship of the roadway segments in the road network map, which
further helps match crash data with traffic data, similar to Yang at al.
(2018a, 2018b).
In this paper, we used a matched case-control design to extract the
traffic flow data of corresponding non-crash cases for each crash, similar
to Yang at al. (2018a, 2018b). It is notable that the non-crash scenario
refers to the “normal traffic condition” when there is no crash observed
within the continuous 1 h window within the three roadway segments.
The matched case-control study randomly selects four non-crash cases
for each crash, given the same location. Besides, we calculated six var­
iables, i.e., average speed (AvgSpd), standard deviation of speed
(StdSpd), average volume (AvgVol), standard deviation of volume
(StdVol), average time occupancy (AvgOcc), and standard deviation of
time occupancy (StdOcc), based on the raw traffic flow data from dual
LDs on the same roadway segment. It therefore created 18 traffic vari­
ables (i.e. 6 Variables × 3 Segments = 18). Additionally, the length of
three segments (i.e. U_length, C_length, D_length) and the number of
lanes of crash segment were also collected as variables.
Fig. 3. Nomenclature of the time–space slices of crashes.
5
Accident Analysis and Prevention 178 (2022) 106848
Finally, the matched case-control data for RTCRP models has 1,336
crashes and 5,792 non-crashes scenarios. The descriptive statistics of
variables are listed in Table 2. It was further split into the training data
from the first half of the month and the test data from the second half of
the month. The training data has 639 crashes and 2,764 non-crashes.
Besides, the test data has 697 crashes and 3,028 non-crashes.
3.2.2. Automatic crash detection
In order to detect the crash occurrence timely, we selected the traffic
flow data from three segments around the crash location at the 0–5 min
just after the reported time of the crash occurrence. Similarly, three
segments around the crash location were also identified (see Fig. 3). For
instance, regarding the crash occurred at 13:32, we extracted traffic data
from 13:32 to 13:37 (i.e. 5 min window) and termed it as “AfterCrash”
(AC). We also used a matched case-control design to select normal traffic
flow conditions, like the data preparation of matched case-control data
in RTCRP analysis. A ratio of 4:1 was also used to randomly select the
non-crash cases for each crash case, given the same location. In addition,
the same 18 variables, namely the average values and standard devia­
tion of volume, speed and time occupancy for three roadway segments
were calculated based on the raw data. Additionally, the length of three
segments and the number of lanes of the crash segment were also
collected.
Finally, the matched case-control data for the automatic crash
detection analysis has 1,152 crashes and 4,608 non-crashes scenarios.
The descriptive statistics of variables are listed in Table 2. It was further
split into the training data from the first half of the month and the test
data from the second half of the month. The training data has 559
crashes and 2,236 non-crashes. Besides, the test data has 593 crashes
and 2,372 non-crashes.
4. Analysis results
Firstly, the reinforcement learning tree was utilized to identify the
important traffic variables for model development of real-time crash risk
prediction (RTCRP) and automatic crash detection (ACD), respectively.
And then, the important factors were considered as the input of rein­
forcement learning tree (RLT), logistic regression, support vector ma­
chine (SVM) and deep neural network (DNN) models to predict the crash
risk and detect the crash occurrence, respectively. Since SVM is a good
classifier and can obtain good performance for real-time crash risk
predictions (e.g., Sun et al., 2014; Basso et al., 2018), it was utilized in
this paper to compare with the RLT for evaluating the prediction per­
formance of RLT.
4.1. Variables selection
There are numerous factors that contribute to the crash occurrence
and conversely, the crash occurrence would significantly affect the
traffic operations. Recently, like random forest technique (e.g., Wu
et al., 2013), the reinforcement learning tree was employed to rank the
importance of variables and select the important variables. The ranking
results of the variable importance for RTCRP and ACD are shown in
Fig. 4.
It can be found that AvgSpd_C_BC (average speed for crash segment
before the crash occurrence) and AvgSpd_C_AC (average speed for crash
segment after the crash occurrence) are the most important indicator for
the crash prediction and crash detection, respectively. Variable corre­
lations should be carefully considered for the linear models since it will
cause the multicollinearity problem (Daoud, 2017). A combination of
variable importance and variable correlations was used to select the
variables in the final model for RTCRP and ACD. The rules are i) to
prioritize variables with higher importance, and ii) to exclude other
variables that are highly correlated with existing variables. Therefore,
five important variables are chosen for the crash prediction and crash
detection models, respectively. The crash risk prediction model has
K. Yang et al. Accident Analysis and Prevention 178 (2022) 106848

Table 2
Statistical summary of variables.
Real-time crash risk prediction Automatic crash detection

Variable Mean Std Dev Min Max Variable Mean Std Dev Min Max

AvgVol_U_BC 5.21 2.91 0 12.89 AvgVol_U_AC 5.19 2.73 0 12.73

StdVol_U_BC 2.17 1.08 0 12.80 StdVol_U_AC 2.22 1.05 0 12.55
AvgSpd_U_BC 59.21 19.06 6.15 91.06 AvgSpd_U_AC 56.80 20.52 5.43 89.85
StdSpd_U_BC 11.72 6.09 0 42.12 StdSpd_U_AC 12.34 6.51 0 39.6
AvgOcc_U_BC 16.06 14.31 0 76.54 AvgOcc_U_AC 18.14 15.69 0 77.91
StdOcc_U_BC 9.82 9.53 0 50.03 StdOcc_U_AC 10.95 9.90 0 49.69
AvgVol_C_BC 5.15 3.10 0 22.51 AvgVol_C_AC 5.10 2.90 0 23.07
StdVol_C_BC 2.24 1.52 0 16.80 StdVol_C_AC 2.27 1.43 0 16.5
AvgSpd_C_BC 58.95 19.15 7.59 97.83 AvgSpd_C_AC 57.73 19.73 4.53 92.76
StdSpd_C_BC 11.89 6.43 0 48.50 StdSpd_C_AC 12.64 6.77 0 43.35
AvgOcc_C_BC 16.02 14.41 0 78.70 AvgOcc_C_AC 17.17 15.05 0 90.86
StdOcc_C_BC 9.75 9.57 0 49.27 StdOcc_C_AC 10.62 9.94 0 50.85
AvgVol_D_BC 5.19 2.89 0 14.12 AvgVol_D_AC 5.20 2.83 0 13.78
StdVol_D_BC 2.18 1.08 0 12.49 StdVol_D_AC 2.21 1.11 0 12.83
AvgSpd_D_BC 60.42 17.84 7.5 90.15 AvgSpd_D_AC 60.62 17.48 5.38 92.51
StdSpd_D_BC 11.52 5.98 0 45.15 StdSpd_D_AC 11.70 6.01 0 39.88
AvgOcc_D_BC 14.90 12.59 0 75.00 AvgOcc_D_AC 14.72 12.20 0 72.15
StdOcc_D_BC 10.02 9.90 0 49.07 StdOcc_D_AC 10.11 9.71 0 50.05
C_length 1000.83 492.32 114 3498 C_length 1014.77 486.25 198 3121
U_length 891.55 522.25 114 3121 U_length 887.04 512.40 114 2445
D_length 964.85 477.32 124 3498 D_length 959.82 457.24 124 3498
Lanes 3.40 0.84 2 6 Lanes 3.48 0.81 2 6

Fig. 4. The variable importance rankings.

AvgSpd_C_BC, AvgOcc_D_BC, AvgVol_U_BC, AvgOcc_U_BC and Avg­
Vol_C_BC. On the other hand, the automatic crash detection model has
AvgSpd_C_AC, AvgSpd_U_AC, AvgVol_U_AC, AvgVol_C_AC and StdOc­
c_U_AC. Hence, these five selected variables were employed as the inputs
of models for RTCRP and ACD, respectively.
4.2. Real-time crash risk prediction models
4.2.1. Logistic regression models
The selected variables were inputted into the logistic regression (LR)
model for real-time crash risk prediction (RTCRP). The results are listed
in Table 3. AvgSpd_C_BC has a negative sign, which means that low
speed increases crash risk. The sign of AvgOcc_D_BC and AvgOcc_U_BC
are positive meaning that the higher time occupancy at the upstream
and crash segments will increase the crash risk. In addition, AvgVo­
l_U_BC and AvgVol_C_BC have positive signs, which means that the
larger traffic flow at the upstream and crash segments will also increase
the crash risk.

6
K. Yang et al. Accident Analysis and Prevention 178 (2022) 106848

Table 3
Logistic regression models.
Real-time crash risk prediction Automatic crash detection

Parameter Estimate Z value 95 % CI Parameter Estimate Z value 95 % CI

Intercept − 1.075 − 3.743 − 1.638 − 0.512 Intercept 4.923 11.484 4.083 5.763
AvgSpd_C_BC − 0.054 − 17.252 − 0.060 − 0.048 AvgSpd_C_AC − 0.076 − 19.139 − 0.083 − 0.068
AvgOcc_D_BC 0.027 5.553 0.018 0.037 AvgSpd_U_AC − 0.044 − 12.306 − 0.051 − 0.037
AvgVol_U_BC 0.039 4.070 0.020 0.057 AvgVol_U_AC − 0.083 − 2.750 − 0.141 − 0.024
AvgOcc_U_BC 0.036 8.432 0.027 0.044 StdOcc_U_AC 0.053 7.415 0.039 0.066
AvgVol_C_BC 0.157 7.450 0.116 0.199 AvgVol_C_AC − 0.057 − 2.014 − 0.113 − 0.002

4.2.2. Support vector machine models
SVM models in this paper were trained by the Packages ‘e1071′
(Meyer et al., 2017) in R®4.0.5 (R, 2022). The different combinations of
parameters including kernel function, cost (C) value and gamma (γ) are
considered to find the best model. We considered two kinds of kernel
functions, i.e., linear kernel and radial kernel. They provide the non-
linear relationship and linear relationship between output variables
and input variables, respectively. The C value presents the size of the
“soft margin” around the hyperplane of SVM models. As the C value
reduces, the size of the “soft margin” increases and more points inside
the soft margin cannot be classified into any group. γ indicates the de­
gree of curvature of the hyperplane. As the increase of γ, the hyperplane
becomes curvier, which may classify points too well and cause over­
fitting issues. SVM models are trained with the input of the five
important variables. We considered 10 different γ (i.e. 100, 10, 5, 2, 1,
0.5, 0.1, 0.01, 0.001, 0.0001) and 10 different C values (i.e. 1000, 500,
100, 50, 10, 1, 0.1, 0.01, 0.001, 0.0001). Therefore, 200 SVM models (i.
e. 10 × 10 × 2 = 200) were trained and compared by using the classi­
fication error. The kernel function, γ, C value, the number of support
vectors of the final (best) SVM model are “Radial”, 0.01, 100, and 822,
respectively. In addtion, its classification error is 0.1065 which is the
smallest.
4.2.3. Deep neural network
Deep neural network (DNN), which is one of the emerging machine
learning methods, was also developed with the input of the same
important variables in this paper for comparisons. We considered
different combinations of important parameters, such as the number of
hidden layers (e.g., 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40), the
number of neurons in each layer (e.g., 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90,
100, 200, 300, 400,500), activation functions so as to obatin the best
models. Rectified Linear Unit (ReLU) and tangent hyperbolic (Tanh)
were considered as activation functions. To avoid over-fitting issues,
dropout rate and L2 regularization were used in the DNN structure. We
found that there was no significant improvement as the increase of the
number of hidden layers. When the number of neurons is greater than
100, the AUC value tends to be stable with the increase of the number of
neurons. By using the AUC and accuracy values and considering the
computing cost, therefore, we determine the best DNN model for RTCRP
and it has 15 hidden layers and 100 neurons in each hidden layer. Be­
sides, its activation function, dropout rate, L2 regularization value are
tangent hyperbolic (Tanh), 0.1 and 0.001, respectively.
set to eight for the final RLT model by considering the performance and
training time. Different RLT models with various numbers of trees are
trained and tested, whose results are shown in Fig. 5. We can notice that
the AUC value increases with the improvement of the number of trees,
and then the AUC value is stable at about 0.90. Considering the pre­
diction performance and the training cost, the final RLT model has 8
cores and 100 trees.
4.2.5. Predictive performance evaluation
After the development of the RLT, LR, SVM and DNN models for the
real-time crash risk prediction (RTCRP) with the input of the training
data, the test data as discussed earlier was employed to validate and
compare their prediction performances. Table 4 providess the results.
The AUC values from the training data are greater than 0.87 and these
values from the test data are not significantly less than those from the
training data, respectively. It indicates that the developed models have
good prediction performance and they have no overfitting issues.
The RLT model has the biggest AUC value which is 0.903. It is
significantly better than that of LR, SVM and DNN models. Therefore,
RLT offers the best prediction performance and it has the potential to
estimate the probability of crash occurrence in real-time.
4.3. Automatic crash detection models
Similarly, the same training data were employed to train LR, SVM,
DNN, and reinforcement learning tree models to develop the automatic
crash detection (ACD) models with the variables identified earlier as
input.
Table 3 presents the results of the logistic regression (LR) model for
ACD. AvgSpd_C_AC, AvgSpd_U_AC, AvgVol_U_AC and AvgVol_C_AC
have negative signs meaning that after the crash occurrence, speed and
traffic flow at the upstream and crash segments will reduce quickly due
to the impact of a crash. The sign of StdOcc_U_AC is positive, which
means that the fluctuation of traffic flow at the upstream segment will
increase since drivers in different lanes will take different measures such

4.2.4. Reinforcement learning tree

The Package ‘RLT’ (Zhu, 2022) in R®4.0.5 (R, 2022) was used to
develop the reinforcement learning tree (RLT) models. Thousands of
different numbers of cores (i.e. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, …, 6000) and different
numbers of trees (i.e., 1, 2, 3, …, 10, 20, 30, …, 100, 200, 300, 400, 500)
were employed to structure different RLT models. The results show that
the AUC values of the developed RLT models with different numbers of
cores are similar (at about 0.90), which means that the impact of the
number of cores on the model performance is not significant. Addi­
tionally, the training time of RLT models increases significantly with the
improvement of the number of cores. Therefore, the number of cores is Fig. 5. The AUC values of RLT models with different numbers of trees
for RTCRP.

7
K. Yang et al. Accident Analysis and Prevention 178 (2022) 106848

Table 4
AUC values of RTCRP and ACD models.
Models RLT LR SVM (Kernel=“Radial”) DNN

Training Test Training Test Training Test Training Test

RTCRP 0.980 0.903 0.892 0.870 0.898 0.884 0.894 0.869

ACD 0.989 0.936 0.922 0.898 0.960 0.930 0.923 0.914

as changing lanes and reducing speeds. This result is reasonable
intuitively.
The experimental design also led to the evaluation of a total of 200
SVM models, with different combinations of 10 different γ (i.e. 0.0001,
0.001, 0.01, 0.1, 0.5, 1, 2, 5, 10 and 100), 10 different C values (i.e.
0.0001, 0.001, 0.01, 0.1, 1, 10, 50, 100, 500, 1000) and two kernel
functions (i.e. linear and radial), to find the best one for crash detections.
Finally, the kernel function, the C value and γ of the best SVM model
have found to be “radial”, 100 and 0.1, respectively. Its classification
error achieves the smallest.
Similar to the development of DNN models for RTCRP, thousands of
DNN models with different parameter combinations of activation func­
tions, the number of hidden layers, and the number of neurons in each
layer were examined to determine the best models. Finally, the best DNN
model for ACD has 30 hidden layers and 50 neurons in each hidden
layer. In addition, its activation function, dropout rate, L2 regularization
value are tangens hyperbolic (Tanh), 0.1 and 0.001, respectively.
Similarly, thousands of reinforcement learning tree models with
different numbers of cores and trees were developed and compared. The
results show that the AUC values of the developed RLT models with 1 to
50 cores are similar (at about 0.93), which means that the number of
cores has no significant impact on the model performance when it is less
than 50. When the number of cores is greater than 50, the AUC values of
these RLT models are stable at about 0.90. Therefore, the number of
cores is set to four for the final RLT model by considering the perfor­
mance and training time. Finally, different RLT models who have
different numbers of trees are trained and tested, whose results are
shown in Fig. 6. As we expect, the AUC value increases with the
improvement of the number of trees, and then the AUC value is stable at
about 0.93. Considering the prediction performance and training cost,
the final RLT model has 4 cores and 100 trees.
Finally, the detection performance of developed RLT, LR, SVM and
DNN models were tested by the same test data. Table 4 exhibits the
results. The models are well developed since their AUC values are
relatively high and there is no big difference between the AUC values of
the training and the test datasets. We can notice that RLT also has the
highest AUC value (0.936), which is significantly higher than LR, SVM
and DNN models. Therefore, RLT also has the potential to detect crash
occurrence quickly.
5. Model exploration
Since the real-world application is complicated, more model explo­
rations related to the applications and implementation of the RLT model
should be conducted, including RLT predictive performance in small
sample environments, the impact of variable selections, the validation
by the full dataset, and a sensitivity analysis.
5.1. RLT prediction performance in the small sample environment
The predictive ability of classifiers mostly depends on the size and
quality of the training sample (Kim, 2009; Figueroa et al., 2012).
However, the data collection and preparation can be expensive, since
the crash is rare and traffic monitoring data is expensive to analyze. On
the other hand, relatively small samples may result in many issues such
as the model fitness and the unbiasedness of estimators (e.g., Yu and
Abdel-Aty, 2013). Therefore, it needs to estimate the size of the sample
required to reach a performance target (Figueroa et al., 2012). This
paper samples different percentages of the whole dataset from the first
half of the month to train RLT models and then uses the same test data to
test their predictive performance, for RTCRP and ACD, respectively.
Table 5 provides the results. Note that in order to obtain results that are
more robust, each model is trained by using randomly sampled datasets
and tested more than 20 times and the average AUC values are calcu­
lated. We can find that the AUC values of RLT models increase as the
sampling percentage increases implying that higher samples improves
the predictive performance.
Besides, the increase amplitude of AUC values is not large after a
certain percentage (e.g., 30 %). Regarding RLT-based real-time crash
risk prediction models, 20% of sampled datasets can help RLT obtain
reasonable predictive performance (i.e., AUC = 0.887), which is closed
to 98.3 % of the predictive performance of the RLT model that was
trained by the whole dataset. The number of crashes is about 26 times as
many as the number of variables (i.e., 639 × 20 % / 5 ≈ 26) since there
are five variables in the model. When conditions are extremely limited,
10 % of sampled datasets can help RLT obtain acceptable predictive
performance (e.g., AUC = 0.878). Regarding RLT-based automatic crash
detection models, 10 % of sampled datasets can help RLT obtain
reasonable predictive performance (i.e., AUC = 0.920), which is closed
to 98.2 % of the predictive performance of the RLT model that are
trained by the whole dataset. Similarly, the number of crashes is about

Table 5
AUC values of RLT models for RTCRP and ACD based on different training sizes.
Percentage of the whole dataset from the RTCRP ACD
first half of the month
Training Test Training Test

100 % 0.980 0.903 0.989 0.936

90 % 0.979 0.901 0.989 0.936
80 % 0.981 0.900 0.988 0.935
70 % 0.982 0.900 0.988 0.934
60 % 0.981 0.898 0.988 0.934
50 % 0.981 0.896 0.988 0.933
40 % 0.981 0.894 0.988 0.931
30 % 0.985 0.890 0.991 0.928
20 % 0.983 0.887 0.990 0.924
10 % 0.986 0.878 0.993 0.920
5% 0.986 0.871 0.993 0.906
1% 1.000 0.850 1.000 0.886
Fig. 6. The AUC values of RLT models with different numbers of trees for ACD.

8
K. Yang et al. Accident Analysis and Prevention 178 (2022) 106848

11 times as many as the number of variables (i.e., 559 × 10 % / 5 ≈ 11). Table 7

Therefore, we can conclude that approximatively, a minimum sample Results of model prediction performance for RTCRP.
size of 20 observations per variable is reasonable for training RLT False RLT SVM (Kernel=“Radial”) DNN
models, and that when conditions are extremely limited, a minimum positive
True True Difference True Difference
sample size of 10 observations per variable is also acceptable. This result rate
positive positive positive
is consistent with existing studies, e.g., the concept of event per variable rate rate rate
of 10 (Concato et al., 1995; Peduzzi et al., 1996), the concept of event 1.0 % 25.3 % 21.8 % 3.50 % 16.36 % 8.94 %
per variable of 20 (Austin & Steyerberg, 2017). 5.0 % 61.6 % 60.4 % 1.20 % 48.23 % 13.37 %
10.0 % 79.3 % 73.0 % 6.30 % 67.96 % 11.34 %
20.0 % 91.4 % 84.8 % 6.60 % 83.98 % 7.42 %
5.2. The impact of variable selections 30.0 % 96.8 % 92.6 % 4.20 % 93.25 % 3.55 %
40.0 % 98.3 % 96.5 % 1.80 % 97.13 % 1.17 %
There is a dilemma in selecting features because too many variables 50.0 % 99.5 % 98.0 % 1.50 % 99.66 % − 0.16 %
60.0 % 99.8 % 98.7 % 1.10 % 99.83 % − 0.03 %
in the model may cause the multicollinearity problem whereas too few
70.0 % 100.0 % 99.8 % 0.20 % 100.00 % 0.00 %
variables cannot provide required information. Therefore, it is impor­ 80.0 % 100.0 % 99.8 % 0.20 % 100.00 % 0.00 %
tant to explore the impact of variable selections on the performance of 90.0 % 100.0 % 100.0 % 0.00 % 100.00 % 0.00 %
RLT models in future applications. The training data from the first half of
the month is employed to train RLT models and the test data from the
second half of the month is used to test them for RTCRP and ACD, Table 8
respectively. Two models were created: (i) using only five selected Results of model detection performance for ACD.
important variables and, (ii) employing all variables, respectively. The
False RLT SVM (Kernel=“Radial”) DNN
results are provided in Table 6. These models are well trained since all of positive
their AUC values from the training data are closed to 1.0 and their AUC True True Difference True Difference
rate
positive positive positive
values from the test data are also more than 0.90. The AUC values of the rate rate rate
RLT models with all variables are found to be a little higher than those
1.0 % 46.7 % 34.4 % 12.30 % 18.55 % 28.15 %
with the five variables for RTCRP and ACD, respectively and their dif­
5.0 % 82.1 % 67.8 % 14.30 % 57.84 % 24.26 %
ference are 0.915 – 0.903 ≈ 0.01 and 0.954 – 0.936 ≈ 0.02. The RLT 10.0 % 92.7 % 82.0 % 10.70 % 79.26 % 13.44 %
models with the inclusion of all variables can slightly increase the per­ 20.0 % 97.5 % 92.2 % 5.30 % 93.09 % 4.41 %
formance compared to the RLT models with limited variables. There­ 30.0 % 98.7 % 93.9 % 4.80 % 96.96 % 1.74 %
40.0 % 99.3 % 96.1 % 3.20 % 98.31 % 0.99 %
fore, collecting as more factors as possible for a specified application
50.0 % 99.8 % 97.6 % 2.20 % 98.82 % 0.98 %
may be helpful to improve the predictive performance of RLT models 60.0 % 100.0 % 98.8 % 1.20 % 99.33 % 0.67 %
because of including more feature information even though the esti­ 70.0 % 100.0 % 99.3 % 0.70 % 99.66 % 0.34 %
mated parameters may be slightly biased due to the multicollinearity 80.0 % 100.0 % 99.8 % 0.20 % 100.00 % 0.00 %
issue. When the condition is limited, selected important variables can 90.0 % 100.0 % 100.0 % 0.00 % 100.00 % 0.00 %

also obtain reasonable predictive performance.

5.3. Validation by the full dataset
For nonparametric models, such as tree-based models, the multi­
collinearity is less of an issue according to the analysis above. Therefore,
the full dataset with all variables can be applied as the input of RLT
models and SVM models in the implementation of RTCRP and ACD since
the full dataset includes more complete information. It should be noted
that one day has 288 time slices (24 h × 60 min / 5 min = 288).
Therefore, the test data including all cases has 697 crashes and 676,396
non-crashes for RTCRP. The test data including all cases has 593 crashes
and 676,396 non-crashes for ACD. Table 7 and Table 8 list the results.
In Table 7, we employed the percentage of the correctly predicted
crash cases (i.e. true positive rate) for different false-alarm rates (i.e.
false positive rate) to measure the prediction performance. The RLT
model has better crash prediction accuracy than the SVM model. If a 10
% false-alarm rate is utilized, 79.3 %, 73.0 % and 67.96 % of crash cases
are predicted correctly by the RLT, SVM and DNN models, as shown in
Table 7. The difference of true positive rates between the RLT and SVM,
DNN models are 6.3 % and 11.34 %, respectively. It means that RLT
could improve the crash accuracy by at least 6.3 % compared with SVM
and DNN.
Similarly, when the false-alarm rate is 10.0 %, 92.7 %, 82.0 % and
79.26 % of crash cases are detected correctly by the RLT model, SVM
and DNN models, respectively (see Table 8). The RLT could improve the
crash detection accuracy by at least 10.70 % compared with SVM and
DNN models.
5.4. Sensitivity analysis
Fig. 7 shows the impact of important variables on the estimation of
crash risk. Note that other variables are set as their statistical mean
values derived from the data. We can find that the relationship between
crash risk and traffic volume at the upstream segment before the crash (i.
e. AvgVol_U_BC) is non-linear. As the average volume in the upstream
segment increases, the crash risk firstly increases, then reduces, and then
increases gradually again. With the improvement of average occupancy
at the upstream segment before the crash (i.e. AvgOcc_U_BC), the crash
risk increases with some fluctuations. Similarly, the crash risk increases
and fluctuates at a relative high level when the average occupancy at the
downstream segment before the crash (i.e. AvgOcc_D_BC) is less than
about 30 %. Differently, the crash risk reduces and tends to be stable
after a value of 30 % of the AvgOcc_D_BC. With the increase of average
speed at the crash segment before the crash (i.e. AvgSpd_C_BC), the
crash risk firstly fluctuates at a high level, and then reduces. We can
understand that it is safer when the traffic flow moves at a higher speed.

Table 6 6. Discussion
AUC values of the RLT models based on different variable numbers.
RTCRP ACD 6.1. Framework
Training Test Training Test
With the technological improvement of detecting, storing and min­
Variable selection 0.980 0.903 0.989 0.936 ing data, reinforcement learning tree (RLT) has the potential to be used
All variables 0.997 0.915 0.999 0.954
to develop models for real-time crash risk prediction (RTCRP) and

9
K. Yang et al. Accident Analysis and Prevention 178 (2022) 106848

Fig. 7. The impact of variables on crash risk.

automatic crash detection (ACD). They could be further employed in and further assist traffic managers to intervene and change the traffic
traffic safety management systems with the input of real-time traffic flow quickly and even proactively. The concept of real-time crash pre­
detection data to enhance the ability of the real-time traffic surveillance, diction relates to the hypothesis that the probability of a crash occurring

Fig. 8. Traffic safety management framework based on real-time traffic detector data.

10
K. Yang et al.
on a specific road section within a very short time window can be pre­
dicted in advance by using the instantaneous traffic dynamics (e.g.
Hossain et al., 2019). However, the idea of ACD involves an analysis and
identification of traffic patterns by utilizing traffic monitoring data
observed just after the occurrence of historical incidents to be applied in
the future to detect crashes on the freeway in real time (Abdel-Aty et al.,
2010), and further provide quick and reliable information, such as the
location, changes in traffic patterns. Fig. 8 illustrates a traffic safety
management framework based on real-time traffic detector data
including RTCRP and ACD to identify and detect the hazardous traffic
conditions.
Loop detectors on urban expressways monitor the traffic flow in­
formation and send it to the data center in real time. More traffic vari­
ables are created during the data aggregation and are used to assess the
crash probability (which is also termed as crash risk) by the developed
RLT-based RTCRP model. Once the crash probability is bigger than the
predetermined threshold, the corresponding segment is labeled with a
potential crash sign, and then the system will provide a dangerous
warning to inform the road operator and drivers around directly/indi­
rectly. Special interventions are also triggered to smooth traffic fluctu­
ations (Abdel-Aty et al., 2010) to avoid the crash occurrence.
Meanwhile, the aggregated traffic information is also flowing into the
ACD algorithms based on reinforcement learning tree in real time to
detect crashes. If trends satisfy certain conditions (e.g. pre-identified
thresholds), the segment is flagged as a crash, and then a crash warn­
ing is triggered to inform the road operator and drivers on the upstream
of traffic flow directly/indirectly, and further measures are triggered for
loss reductions. ACD is helpful in two ways: (i) to shorten the start time
of dispatching emergency personnel for medical supports, road main­
tenance, and removing obstructions, and (ii) to provide the real-time
distribution information of incidents in the road network to optimize
the route choice for road users. Besides, the intervention strategies
include variable speed limit, variable message sign, speed harmoniza­
tion, queue warning, ramp metering, rerouting information on dynamic
message sign, merge control, managed lanes, temporary shoulder use
and so on.
The full dataset is employed to validate the proposed framework. The
result is shown in Fig. 9. When the false-alarm rate is 10.0 %, the RLT-
based RTCRP model of the framework can predict correctly 77.7 % of
the crashes. If reasonable proactive measures in advance can be con­
ducted to provide warnings, these crashes can be avoided. In addition,
93.0 % (i.e., 96.0 % − 3.0 % = 93.0 %) of crashes can be detected
correctly by automatic crash detections (ACD). If proactive measures do
not prevent the crash occurrence, 93.0 % of crashes can be detected to
provide timely rescues and disposals to reduce the loss. Additionally,
74.7 % (i.e., 77.7 % − 3.0 %) of crashes can be predicted and detected
Fig. 9. The effectiveness of the traffic safety management framework.
11
Accident Analysis and Prevention 178 (2022) 106848
correctly by RTCRP and ACD simultaneously. Totally, 96.0 % of crashes
can be predicted or detected correctly by the proposed framework,
which is helpful to improve road traffic safety.
6.2. Policy implications
This proposed traffic safety management framework can be imple­
mented in the current and future traffic environments. In the current
traffic environment including only traditional human-driven vehicles,
this proposed framework can be applied in the freeway and urban
expressway systems with instrumented detectors. It is helpful to provide
real-time information (i.e., crash risk, warnings, traffic management
measures) to the drivers around the related area and traffic management
engineers. In the near future, there will be mixed traffic flow including
traditional human-driven vehicles and connected and autonomous ve­
hicles (CAVs) for quite some time. Even though the driving errors of
CAVs may reduce, there are still conflicts or crash risk between CAVs
and traditional human-driven vehicles or between traditional human-
driven vehicles. Therefore, this proposed framework will be still help­
ful for traffic managers and drivers if it is introduced to the freeway and
urban expressways. The crash risk information can also be used in the
route planning or choices of vehicles. Additionally, there is an advantage
of employing real-time trajectory data into the input and development of
real-time crash risk prediction (RTCRP) and automatic crash detection
(ACD), which can further improve the model performance and help
evaluate the crash risk at the individual vehicle level. In future, the CAV
will encroach the whole roads of some special freeway or urban ex­
pressways. This proposed framework will also be helpful since it can
provide the information of real-time crash risk and CAVs could choose
the safer routes.
7. Limitations
In the future application, the engineer can design their own process
of the variable collection, cleaning, aggregation and merging according
to the real-world device conditions (e.g., the ability of traffic detection,
data storage and data mining). For instance, if more accurate informa­
tion about time and location of the crash occurrence can be collected, or
more emerging data such as driver behavior data and GPS data can be
obtained in real time, more variables that are more accurate can be
developed as the input of the models to future improve the model per­
formance. Besides, definitions of pre-crash period and over-
representation of the normal traffic condition are also essential issues
that should be carefully explored in the next step. Additionally, due to
brevity, this paper could not explore the impacts of different time win­
dows (e.g., 1 min, 2 min, 3 min, 4 min, 5 min) on the model performance
and verify the crash occurrence time even though the error about crash
reporting time is less than 2 min and almost impossible to reach 5 min
(Yang et al., 2018a). They are two of the most important research points
in our next step.
8. Conclusion
This study aimed to develop better modelling methods for real-time
crash risk prediction (RTCRP) and automatic crash detection (ACD).
Firstly, the important factors for RTCRP and ACD were identified. Sec­
ondly, after finding the optimal parameters, LR, SVM, DNN and RLT
were applied to develop RTCRP and ACD models, respectively. Then
comparisons of these developed models were made via the AUC values
and a sensitivity analysis. In addition, some model explorations related
to the application and implementation of RLT models were conducted,
including RLT predictive performance in small sample environments,
the impact of variable selections, the validation by the full dataset, and
the sensitivity analysis. Finally, a new real-time traffic safety manage­
ment framework based on RLT models was developed.
From the model results, the average speed at the crash section, the
K. Yang et al.
volume at the crash and the upstream sections, and the time occupancy
at the upstream and the downstream sections are important crash
contributing factors for RTCRP. The speed and volume at the crash and
the upstream sections, and the standard deviation of time occupancy at
the upstream section are the most important for ACD. RLT outperforms
LR, SVM and DNN in the applications of RTCRP and ACD confirmed by
the AUC values and the sensitivity test. When the false-alarm rate was
10.0 %, 79 % of crashes were predicted correctly by RTCRP and 93 % of
crashes were detected correctly by ACD. Overall, 96 % of crashes were
predicted or detected correctly by the proposed framework, which can
help improve the road traffic safety. RLT has the potential to predict
crash probability and detect the occurrence of crashes in real-time in the
application in the proactive traffic safety management.
This paper also revealed that collecting more data helps improve the
predictive performance of RLT models and approximatively, a minimum
sample size of 20 observations per variable is acceptable for training RLT
models. When conditions are extremely limited, a minimum sample size
of 10 observations per variable is also adequate. Besides, collecting as
more factors as possible is helpful to improve the prediction perfor­
mance of RLT models. When the condition is limited, selected important
variables are also good to obtain reasonable predictive performance.
The findings from this paper on detecting potential crashes based on
unstable traffic dynamics would be essential to any traffic control cen­
ters that operate and manage traffic on high-speed networks. This paper
contributes in the robust implementation of a new Artificial Intelligence
(AI) / Machine Learning (ML) based algorithm implementation in the
field of RTCRP and can also help conceptualize such a system through
the description.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Kui Yang: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation,
Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Data curation, Writing –
original draft. Mohammed Quddus: Supervision, Methodology,
Writing – review & editing, Project administration. Constantinos
Antoniou: Supervision, Writing – review & editing, Project
administration.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Data availability
The authors do not have permission to share data.
Acknowledgement
This work has been funded from the European Union’s Horizon 2020
research and innovation programme i–DREAMS under grant agreement
No 814761.
References
Abdel-Aty, M., Uddin, N., Abdalla, M., Pande, A., and Hisa, L., 2004. Prediction freeway
crashes based on loop detector data using matched case-control logistic regression.
Presented at the 83th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board,
Washington, D.C.
Abdel-Aty, M., Pande, P., Liang, H., 2010. The concept of proactive traffic management
for enhancing freeway safety and operation. ITE J. 80 (4), 34–41.
Abdel-Aty, M.A., Pemmanaboina, R., 2006. Calibrating a real-time traffic crash-
prediction model using archived weather and ITS traffic data. IEEE Trans. Intell.
Transp. Syst. 7 (2), 167–174.
Ahmed, S.A., Cook, A.R., 1982. Application of time-series analysis techniques to freeway
incident detection. Transp. Res. Rec. 841, 19–21.
12
Accident Analysis and Prevention 178 (2022) 106848
Ali, Y., Haque, M.M., Zheng, Z., 2022. An Extreme Value Theory approach to estimate
crash risk during mandatory lane-changing in a connected environment. Analytic
Methods in Accident Research 33, 100193.
Asakura, Y., Kusakabe, T., Nguyen, L.X., Ushiki, T., 2017. Incident detection methods
using probe vehicles with on-board GPS equipment. Transp. Res. Part C: Emerging
Technol. 81, 330–341.
Austin, P.C., Steyerberg, E.W., 2017. Events per variable (EPV) and the relative
performance of different strategies for estimating the out-of-sample validity of
logistic regression models. Stat. Methods Med. Res. 26 (2), 796–808.
Basso, F., Basso, L.J., Bravo, F., Pezoa, R., 2018. Real-time crash prediction in an urban
expressway using disaggregated data. Transp. Res. Part C: Emerging Technol. 86,
202–219.
Basso, F., Basso, L.J., Pezoa, R., 2020. The importance of flow composition in real-time
crash prediction. Accid. Anal. Prev. 137, 105436.
Basso, F., Pezoa, R., Varas, M., Villalobos, M., 2021. A deep learning approach for real-
time crash prediction using vehicle-by-vehicle data. Accid. Anal. Prev. 162, 106409.
Cai, Q., Abdel-Aty, M., Yuan, J., Lee, J., Wu, Y., 2020. Real-time crash prediction on
expressways using deep generative models. Transp. Res. Part C: Emerging Technol.
117, 102697.
Concato, J., Peduzzi, P., Holford, T.R., Feinstein, A.R., 1995. The importance of event per
variable (EPV) in proportional hazard analysis: I. Background, goals and general
strategy. J. Clin. Epidemiol. 48 (12), 1495–1501.
Daoud, J.I., 2017. Multicollinearity and regression analysis. Journal of Physics:
Conference Series 949 (1), 012009.
Dia, H., Rose, G., 1997. Development and evaluation of neural network freeway incident
detection models using field data. Transp. Res. Part C: Emerging Technol. 5 (5),
313–331.
Dudek, C.L., Messer, C.J., Nuckles, N.B., 1974. Incident detection on urban freeways.
Transp. Res. Rec. 495, 12–24.
ESRI, E. ArcMap 9.2. ESRI Inc, 2006.
Essa, M., Sayed, T., Reyad, P., 2019. Transferability of real-time safety performance
functions for signalized intersections. Accid. Anal. Prev. 129, 263–276.
Essa, M., Sayed, T., 2020. Self-learning adaptive traffic signal control for real-time safety
optimization. Accid. Anal. Prev. 146, 105713.
Figueroa, R.L., Zeng-Treitler, Q., Kandula, S., Ngo, L.H., 2012. Predicting sample size
required for classification performance. BMC Med. Inf. Decis. Making 12 (1), 1–10.
Fu, C., Sayed, T., 2022. Bayesian dynamic extreme value modeling for conflict-based
real-time safety analysis. Analytic Methods in Accident Research 34, 100204.
Gong, Y., Abdel-Aty, M., Yuan, J., Cai, Q., 2020. Multi-objective reinforcement learning
approach for improving safety at intersections with adaptive traffic signal control.
Accid. Anal. Prev. 144, 105655.
Gu, Y., Qian, Z.S., Chen, F., 2016. From Twitter to detector: Real-time traffic incident
detection using social media data. Transp. Res. Part C: Emerging Technol. 67,
321–342.
Hossain, M., Abdel-Aty, M., Quddus, M.A., Muromachi, Y., Sadeek, S.N., 2019. Real-time
crash prediction models: State-of-the-art, design pathways and ubiquitous
requirements. Accid. Anal. Prev. 124, 66–84.
Huang, T., Wang, S., Sharma, A., 2020. Highway crash detection and risk estimation
using deep learning. Accid. Anal. Prev. 135, 105392.
Kim, S.Y., 2009. Effects of sample size on robustness and prediction accuracy of a
prognostic gene signature. BMC Bioinf. 10 (1), 1–10.
Kinoshita, A., Takasu, A., Adachi, J., 2015. Real-time traffic incident detection using a
probabilistic topic model. Information Systems 54, 169–188.
Li, P., Abdel-Aty, M., Yuan, J., 2020b. Real-time crash risk prediction on arterials based
on LSTM-CNN. Accid. Anal. Prev. 135, 105371.
Li, L., Lin, Y., Du, B., Yang, F., & Ran, B., 2020. Real-time traffic incident detection based
on a hybrid deep learning model. Transportmetrica A: Transport Science, 1-21.
Li, Z., Xu, C., Pu, Z., Guo, Y., Liu, P., 2020c. Reinforcement learning-based variable speed
limits control to reduce crash risks near traffic oscillations on freeways. IEEE Intell.
Transp. Syst. Mag. 99, 1.
Lin, Y., Li, L., Jing, H., Ran, B., Sun, D., 2020. Automated traffic incident detection with a
smaller dataset based on generative adversarial networks. Accid. Anal. Prev. 144,
105628.
Lu, Z., Xia, J., Jiao, T., Shi, X., Huang, W., 2012. Analysis of optimal temporal
aggregation interval of traffic flow data for urban road traffic monitoring.
J. Southeast Univ. Natural Science Edition 42 (5), 1000–1005.
Mandzuka, S., Kljaić, Z., Skorput, P., 2011. The use of mobile communication in traffic
incident management process. J. Green Eng. 4, 413–429.
Margreiter, M., 2016. Automatic incident detection based on bluetooth detection in
northern Bavaria. Transp. Res. Procedia 15, 525–536.
Masters, P. H., Lam, J. K., & Wong, K., 1991. Incident detection algorithms for compass-
an advanced traffic management system. In Vehicle Navigation and Information
Systems Conference, 2: 295-310.
Meyer, D., Dimitriadou, E., Hornik, K., Weingessel, A., Leisch, F., 2017. e1071: Misc
functions of the department of statistics, probability theory group (Formerly:
E1071), TU Wien; [R Package e1071 Version 1.6-8]. < https://CRAN.R-project.org/
package=e1071>.
Peduzzi, P., Concato, J., Kemper, E., Holford, T.R., Feinstein, A.R., 1996. A simulation
study of the number of events per variable in logistic regression analysis. J. Clin.
Epidemiol. 49 (2), 1373–1379.
Peng, C., & Xu, C. . Combined variable speed limit and lane change guidance for
secondary crash prevention using distributed deep reinforcement learning. Journal
of Transportation Safety & Security.
R Core Team, 2022. R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R
Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. .
K. Yang et al.
Roy, A., Hossain, M., Muromachi, Y., 2022. A deep reinforcement learning-based
intelligent intervention framework for real-time proactive road safety management.
Accid. Anal. Prev. 165, 106512.
Salas, A., Georgakis, P., Petalas, Y., 2017. Incident detection using data from social
media. In: 2017 IEEE 20th International Conference on Intelligent Transportation
Systems (ITSC), pp. 751–755.
Samant, A., Adeli, H., 2001. Enhancing neural network traffic incident-detection
algorithms using wavelets. Comput.-Aided Civ. Infrastruct. Eng. 16 (4), 239–245.
Sun, J., Sun, J., Chen, P., 2014. Use of support vector machine models for real-time
prediction of crash risk on urban expressways. Transp. Res. Record: J. Transp. Res.
Board 2432, 91–98.
Teng, H., Qi, Y., 2003. Application of wavelet technique to freeway incident detection.
Transp. Res. Part C: Emerging Technol. 11 (3–4), 289–308.
Wang, L., Abdel-Aty, M., Shi, Q., Park, J., 2015. Real-time crash prediction for
expressway weaving segments. Transp. Res. Part C: Emerging Technol. 61, 1–10.
Wang, L., Abdel-Aty, M., Lee, J., Shi, Q., 2019b. Analysis of real-time crash risk for
expressway ramps using traffic, geometric, trip generation, and socio-demographic
predictors. Accid. Anal. Prev. 122, 378–384.
Wang, W., Chen, S., Qu, G., 2008. Incident detection algorithm based on partial least
squares regression. Transp. Res. Part C: Emerging Technol. 16 (1), 54–70.
Wang, J., Luo, T., Fu, T., 2019a. Crash prediction based on traffic platoon characteristics
using floating car trajectory data and the machine learning approach. Accid. Anal.
Prev. 133, 105320.
World Health Organization, 2018. Global status report on road safety 2018. World
Health Organization.
Wu, J., Abdel-Aty, M., Yu, R., Gao, Z., 2013. A novel visible network approach for
freeway crash analysis. Transp. Res. Part C: Emerging Technol. 36, 72–82.
Xiao, J., 2019. SVM and KNN ensemble learning for traffic incident detection. Physica A
517, 29–35.
Xu, C., Wang, W., Liu, P., Li, Z., 2015. Calibration of crash risk models on freeways with
limited real-time traffic data using Bayesian meta-analysis and Bayesian inference
approach. Accid. Anal. Prev. 85, 207–218.
13
Accident Analysis and Prevention 178 (2022) 106848
Xu, C., Liu, P., Wang, W., 2016. Evaluation of the predictability of real-time crash risk
models. Accid. Anal. Prev. 94, 207–215.
Yang, K., Wang, X., Quddus, M., & Yu, R., 2019. Predicting Real-Time Crash Risk on
Urban Expressways Using Recurrent Neural Network (No. 19-03921). Presented at
the 98th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board, Washington, D.C.
Yang, K., Wang, X., Yu, R., 2018a. A Bayesian dynamic updating approach for urban
expressway real-time crash risk evaluation. Transp. Res. Part C: Emerging Technol.
96, 192–207.
Yang, K., Yu, R., Wang, X., Quddus, M., Xue, L., 2018b. How to determine an optimal
threshold to classify real-time crash-prone traffic conditions? Accid. Anal. Prev. 117,
250–261.
Yu, R., Abdel-Aty, M., 2013. Utilizing support vector machine in real-time crash risk
evaluation. Accid. Anal. Prev. 51, 252–259.
Yu, R., Wang, Y., Zou, Z., Wang, L., 2020. Convolutional neural networks with refined
loss functions for the real-time crash risk analysis. Transp. Res. Part C: Emerging
Technol. 119, 102740.
Yuan, J., Abdel-Aty, M., Gong, Y., Cai, Q., 2019. Real-time crash risk prediction using
long short-term memory recurrent neural network. Transp. Res. Rec. 2673 (4),
314–326.
Yuan, J., Abdel-Aty, M.A., Yue, L., Cai, Q., 2020. Modeling real-time cycle-level crash
risk at signalized intersections based on high-resolution event-based data. IEEE
Trans. Intell. Transp. Syst. 22 (11), 6700–6715.
Zhang, K., Taylor, M.A., 2006. Effective arterial road incident detection: a Bayesian
network based algorithm. Transp. Res. Part C: Emerging Technol. 14 (6), 403–417.
Zheng, Z., Ahn, S., Monsere, C.M., 2010. Impact of traffic oscillations on freeway crash
occurrences. Accid. Anal. Prev. 42 (2), 626–636.
Zheng, L., Sayed, T., 2020. A novel approach for real time crash prediction at signalized
intersections. Transp. Res. Part C: Emerging Technol. 117, 102683.
Zhu, R., Zeng, D., Kosorok, M.R., 2015. Reinforcement learning trees. J. Am. Stat. Assoc.
110 (512), 1770–1784.
Zhu, R., 2022. RLT: Reinforcement Learning Trees. < https://cran.r-project.org/web/
packages/RLT/index.html>.