Weather Types and Traffic Accidents

Traffic accident data for the Zagreb area for the 1981–1982 period were analyzed to investigate possible relationships between the daily number of accidents and the weather conditions that occurred for the 5 consecutive days, starting two days before the particular day. In the statistical analysis of low accident days weather type classification developed by Poje was used. For the high accident days a detailed analyses of surface and radiosonde data were performed in order to identify possible front passages. A test for independence by contingency table confirmed that conditional probability of the day with small number of accidents is the highest, provided that one day after it »N« or »NW« weather types occur, while it is the smallest for »N1« and »Bc« types. For the remaining 4 days of the examined periods dependence was not statistically confirmed. However, northern (»N«, »NE« and »NW«) and anticyclonic (»Vc«, »V4«, »V3«, »V2« and »mv«) weather types predominated during 5-days intervals related to the days with small number of accidents. On the contrary, the weather types with cyclonic characteristics (»N1«, »N2«, »N3«, »Bc«, »Dol1« and »Dol«), that are generally accompanied by fronts, were the rarest. For 85% days with large number of accidents, which had not been caused by objective circumstances (such as poor visibility, damaged or slippery road etc.), at least one front passage was recorded during the 3-days period, starting one day before the day with large number of accidents