Backpropagation – Artificial Neural Network (BP-ANN): Understanding gender characteristics of older driver accidents in West Midlands of United Kingdom

Older people are vulnerable road users with higher rate of casualties in traffic accidents. The commonly cited causes of accidents for older people are poor attention and decision making at critical locations of road, poor visibility in extreme weather, poor road surface condition and unpredictability of other road users, particularly young drivers. Female drivers are often labelled as being precarious drivers and having higher accident risk comparing to male drivers. This paper applies Backpropagation - Artificial Neural Network (BP-ANN) with a Generalized Delta Rule (GDR) learning algorithm to model the factors affecting traffic accidents of both older female and male drivers. The BP-ANN can construct the causation model of traffic accidents with greater accuracy and define the proportion of errors contributed by each factor to traffic accidents. This paper studies a total of 95,092 accident records in West Midlands of the United Kingdom during the period of 2006 to 2016. This paper determines journey purpose, lighting condition, pedestrian crossing with physical interventions, complex roadway geometry, extreme weather and time severity as the most significant factors of older driver accidents. The accident risk of older drivers can be improved by providing accessible routes, affordable, reliable and convenient public transport, timely warning of unexpected situations and changes in roadway geometry; increasing use of assistive technology in cars, driverless cars and encouraging active transports into sociable activities. The findings help the transport authorities and city councils to develop strategies and measures promoting public and active transports to ensuring the safety of older drivers.