The Use of Machine Learning Methods in Road Safety Research in Poland

Every year, thousands of accidents occur in Poland, often resulting in severe injuries or even death. The implementation of solutions supporting road safety analysis and management processes is necessary to reduce the risk of accidents and minimize their consequences. One of the rapidly developing tools that can play a key role in this area is machine learning. The aim of this study was to develop mathematical models based on ML algorithms describing road safety in Poland. First, variables with the strongest impact on safety were extracted. Then, mathematical modeling was performed using the k-Nearest Neighbors, Random Forest, and RPart algorithms. The best choice for imbalanced data, especially when the goal is to identify rare classes, is the RF model. The KNN model provides a compromise in situations where the highest overall accuracy is desired. On the other hand, the RPart model can be used as a fast, basic model, but it requires improvements to handle rare classes. The results not only identified factors that significantly affect the severity of injuries or the number of fatalities in accidents but, above all, also demonstrated the ability of ML-based models to predict threats and their consequences.