Predicting the Severity of Vehicle Accidents Based on Traffic Accident Attributes Using Machine Learning
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Date
2023-12
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Lead City University, Ibadan
Abstract
The occurrence of accidents on global road networks results in a considerable loss of human life on a yearly basis, hence underscoring the urgent matter of ensuring road safety. This research aims to predict the severity of road traffic accidents and enhance prediction performance by employing two machine learning algorithms; the Random Forest model and the Decision Tree Classifier model. The study employs a dataset obtained from Kaggle.com, which is subjected to comprehensive data mining, pre-processing, and exploratory data analysis. The dataset was divided into training and testing subsets for model development and evaluation. The evaluation of model performance involved the computation of key performance metrics such as precision, recall, and F1-score. The findings of the study revealed that the Random Forest (RF) model continuously exhibited better performance compared to the Decision Tree (DT) model across all evaluation metrics, including precision, recall, F1-score, and overall accuracy. The evaluations consistently exhibited higher values for RF across all accident severity classes, indicating its greater predictive capability in accurately determining accident severity. The RF algorithm was found to have a higher weighted-average F1-score, taking into account the presence of class imbalances within the dataset. Therefore, based on the findings of this study, it can be concluded that the Random Forest (RF) model demonstrates superior performance in accurately predicting accident severity across all categories, with an overall accuracy rate of 0.84. In comparison, the Decision Tree (DT) model achieves an accuracy rate of 0.73. It is
therefore recommended that additional analysis can be done in order to gain a deeper understanding of the underlying causes for misclassifications, with the aim of enhancing the performance of the models for these particular classes. Additionally, optimizing the hyperparameters of the models can result in enhanced performance and utilization of cross- validation methodologies, such as k-fold cross-validation, to more accurately evaluate the models' performance and mitigate the potential for overfitting.
Keywords: Accuracy, Accident severity, Algorithms, Data analysis, Exploratory data analysis, F1-score, Fine-tuning, Machine learning, Precision, Random Forest model, Severity prediction
Word Count: 311 Words
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Keywords
Accident severity, Algorithms, Exploratory data analysis, F1-score, Fine-tuning, Machine learning, Precision, Random Forest model, Severity prediction
Citation
Kate Turabia