DSGF-YOLO: A Lightweight Deep Neural Network for Traffic Accident Detection and Severity Classifications

Traffic accidents pose unpredictable and severe social and economic challenges. Rapid and accurate accident detection, along with reliable severity classification, is essential for timely emergency response and improved road safety. This study proposes DSGF-YOLO, an enhanced deep learning framework based on the YOLOv13 architecture, developed for automated road accident detection and severity classification. The proposed methodology integrates two novel components: the DS-C3K2-FasterNet-Block module, which enhances local feature extraction and computational efficiency, and the Grouped Channel-Wise Self-Attention (G-CSA) module, which strengthens global context modeling and small-object perception. Comprehensive experiments on a diverse traffic accident dataset validate the effectiveness of the proposed framework. The results show that DSGF-YOLO achieves higher precision, recall, and mean average precision than state-of-the-art models such as Faster R-CNN, DETR, and other YOLO variants, while maintaining real-time performance. These findings highlight its potential for intelligent transportation systems and real-world accident monitoring applications.