OLDER DRIVER SAFETY: HOT SPOT ANALYSIS OF FATAL CRASHES IN MASSACHUSETTS

Car crashes are events that result not only from the interaction of drivers and vehicles but also as a result of the spatial components of physical environments (e.g. roadways and land use). The GIS application is a tool to visualize the location of events and to identify hot spots or danger zones on the map by the interacting the location of crashes via latitude and longitude. This study pooled motor vehicle crashes that occurred in Massachusetts (2010–2012) in the Fatal Accident Recording System (FARS NHTSA). Sample (N=686) inclusion criteria were subjects had to have complete data on variables of interest and be involved in a crash resulting in at least one fatality. The majority of subjects were drivers age 35 to 59 (72.6%, n=498), with (27.4%, n=188) drivers age 65 and older. The Optimized Hot Spot analysis utilized the function of collapsing nearest points to test whether the collapsed points were clustered as hotspots significantly or not. By driver’s age and fatal crash, drivers age 35 to 59 had two specific hotspots near Boston and one hotspot near Fall River in MA. Drivers age 65 and older had five different hotspots along with the boundary of greater Boston. This difference in hotspots of fatal crash between younger and older drivers could be related with roadways, traffic volume, and population density. Identification of these crash hotspots will be beneficial for drivers and policy makers. The findings may alert drivers to high risk areas and policy makers can implement countermeasures.