An Analysis of Traffic Accidents on County Roads

IN T R O D U C TIO N In 1960, there were over 73 million motor vehicles in the United States. Approximately 12 million (17 per cent) of these were trucks and buses while the remaining 61 million (83 per cent) were passenger cars. Trucks traveled approximately 130 billion miles for that year and transported 38 per cent of the total tonnage of goods (1600 million tons), and passenger cars traveled approximately 590 billion miles (1, 2)*. This is a phenomenal growth in an industry and method of travel that did not exist 60 years ago. With this great and increasing number of vehicles on the roads and streets today, the probability that they will hit each other or some other object or person becomes greater and greater. Sixty years ago, the accident problem was small. Today, there are slightly less than 40,000 deaths per year attributable to motor vehicles. In addition, there are many major and minor injuries plus an estimated cost to the United States economy of $6.4 billion (1960) for deaths, medical charges, time lost from work, property damage, and other related items (3). In Indiana in recent years there have been approximately 100,000 accidents per year with greater than $50 damage. This figure has been about the same for the period 1952 to 1959 (4). During the same period, accidents on state highways have been decreasing while accidents on county roads have been increasing. Fig. 1 presents a graph of these trends for rural traffic accidents in Indiana for the period 1952-1959, and Table 1 shows the data from which these regression lines were determined. The purpose of this research was to investigate the causes of and determine possible remedies for the rising number of county road accidents in Indiana. County road accidents were defined for the