Comparative analysis of regional variations in road traffic accident patterns with association rule mining

INTRODUCTION: Road Traffic Accidents (RTAs) patterns discovery is vital to formulate mitigation strategies based on the characteristics of RTAs.OBJECTIVES: Various studies have utilised Apriori algorithm for RTA pattern discovery. Hence, this work aimed to explore the applicability of FP-Growth algorithm to discover and compare the RTA patterns in several regions.METHODS: Orange data mining toolkit is used to discover RTA patterns from the open-access RTA datasets from Addis Ababa city (12,317 samples), Finland (371,213 samples), Berlin city-state (50,119 samples), New Zealand (776,878 samples), the UK (1,048,575 samples), and the US (173,829 samples).RESULTS: There are similarities and differences in RTA patterns among the six regions. The five common factors contributing to RTAs are road characteristics, type of road users or objects involved, environment, driver’s profile, and characteristics of RTA location. These findings could be beneficial for the authorities to formulate strategies to reduce the risk of RTAs.CONCLUSION: Discovery of RTA patterns in different regions is beneficial and future work is essential to discover the RTA patterns from different perspectives such as seasonal or periodical variations of RTA patterns.