Road safety in Hungary and Lithuania: investigation of seasonal transport demand

Abstract

This paper is focusing on the road safety tendencies due to the seasonal (summertime) transport demand, in Hungary. The weather has an effect on road safely, therefore theoretieal investigations and measurements were made. To begin with, authors have made an investigation on detailed accident database in order to find trend between seasonal and spatial changes in Hungarian and Lithuanian dataset. Our hypothesis was that within the examined period (2000-2007) more road accidents happened during summertime in Hungary and Lithuania. It has been chosen the 2000-2007 period because the required detailed data are available only for that period in case of both countries for the comparison. The monthly base dataset of 2007 road accidents has been examined to evaluate the change in number of accidents (involving cars, motorcycles/mopeds, pedestrians or bicycles, killed, injured (severely, lightly) in road accidents in Hungary and Lithuania due to the seasonal change. The hypothesis was that due to the heavy tourism in summer time the number of road accidents is higher around Lake Balaton (Hungary) and Lithuanian Seaboard (Klaipeda-Palanga-Šventoji). Lake Balaton has a significant share of road accidents in summertime. What is more, a new approach has been introdueed to investigate the correlation between seasons and road accidents using Cartesian coordinates. To measure the trend between road accidents and seasons in Hungary the linear regression analysis of accident types and time distribution has been examined. In addition, the analysis for the gradients of function both for Balaton and for Hungary without Balaton has been made. This kind of analysis has been made for Lithuanian Seaboard and for Lithuania without Seaboard as well. Finally, the investigation of Hungarian and Lithuanian road safety and atmospherical dataset shows that the changes in seasons cause the changes in road accidents.