TY - JOUR A1 - Diependaele, Kevin A1 - Martensen, Heike A1 - Lerner, Markus A1 - Schepers, Andreas A1 - Bijleveld, Frits A1 - Commandeur, Jacques J. F. T1 - Forecasting German crash numbers: The effect of meteorological variables T2 - Accident analysis & prevention N2 - At the end of each year, the German Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt) publishes the road safety balance of the closing year. They describe the development of accident and casualty numbers disaggregated by road user types, age groups, type of road and the consequences of the accidents. However, at the time of publishing, these series are only available for the first eight or nine months of the year. To make the balance for the whole year, the last three or four months are forecasted. The objective of this study was to improve the accuracy of these forecasts through structural time-series models that include effects of meteorological conditions. The results show that, compared to the earlier heuristic approach, root mean squared errors are reduced by up to 55% and only two out of the 27 different data series yield a modest rise of prediction errors. With the exception of four data series, prediction accuracies also clearly improve incorporating meteorological data in the analysis. We conclude that our approach provides a valid alternative to provide input to policy makers in Germany. KW - Accident KW - Analysis (math) KW - Development KW - Fatality KW - Forecast KW - Germany KW - Injury KW - Method KW - Statistics KW - Weather KW - Analyse (math) KW - Deutschland KW - Entwicklung KW - Prognose KW - Statistik KW - Tödlicher Unfall KW - Unfall KW - Verfahren KW - Verletzung KW - Witterung Y1 - 2019 UR - https://bast.opus.hbz-nrw.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/2221 N1 - Außerdem beteiligt:SWOV, Stichting Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek Verkeersveiligheid. Volltext: DOI 10.1016/j.aap.2018.07.022 VL - 125 SP - 336 EP - 343 ER -