The Influence of Precipitation on Car Crash Risk Across the Rural-Urban Continuum of the Carolinas

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  • Eck, Montana Alan
    • Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Geography
Abstract
  • Nearly six million motor vehicle crashes occur in the United States each year, resulting in over 38,000 deaths and an estimated 4.4 million injuries in 2019 alone. However, the frequency of these severe crash outcomes is not equally distributed, with rural roads experiencing a 2.6 times higher rate of fatal crashes than those designated as urban. According to the Federal Highway Administration, approximately 23% of the six million car crashes in the United States each year are related to inclement weather. While most of these crashes are attributed to human error, adverse weather conditions have been linked to increased speed variability, reduced visibility, and a significantly increased crash risk. In this dissertation, a matched-pair statistical routine is implemented that combines high-resolution precipitation data and more than six million individual car crash records from North Carolina and South Carolina to assess for differences in adverse weather-related crash risk across the rural-urban gradient (2003-2019). This research reveals a significant increase in crash risk during light and heavy rainfall, with the relative risk of experiencing a crash increasing proportionally to the intensity of the precipitation event. Risk generally increases with urbanicity, as the most populated counties in the Carolinas exhibit the greatest crash risk. However, the findings of this dissertation highlight that the relationship between precipitation and crash risk is complex and that simple binary assessments of rural and urban space will often result in an underestimate of the true crash risk. This finding is best-demonstrated in rural areas of the Carolinas, where relative crash risk estimates for rural counties containing an interstate are nearly three times higher than those found for rural counties without an interstate highway. Additionally, the analyses performed in this dissertation reveal just how detrimental winter weather can be for driver safety in the Carolinas, with these events resulting in an 84% increase in crash risk for drivers on winter weather days. Ultimately, the findings of this work help fill a gap for understanding how adverse weather conditions impact crash risk in the southeastern United States and signal the need for more careful consideration of rural-urban comparisons in climate-risk research.
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  • In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted
Advisor
  • Konrad, Charles E
  • Wise, Erika K
  • Ward, Ashley R
  • Cochran, Ferdouz V
  • Black, Alan W
Degree
  • Doctor of Philosophy
Degree granting institution
  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School
Graduation year
  • 2022
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