Award Date

8-2011

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Mathematical Science

Department

Mathematical Sciences

First Committee Member

Chih-Hsiang Ho, Chair

Second Committee Member

Anton Westveld

Third Committee Member

Kaushik Ghosh

Fourth Committee Member

Sarah Catlin

Graduate Faculty Representative

Chad Cross

Number of Pages

91

Abstract

The goal of this thesis is to investigate factors that affect the odds of having a fatality in a vehicle collision. We will be looking at characteristics of the driver that caused the accident (age, gender, behavior, actions, influences, and seat belt worn), the characteristics of the vehicle the driver drove (type of vehicle, and air bag deployment), the characteristics of the environment in which the accident occurred (weather, road condition, lighting, time of day, the day of the week, and month of the year), the characteristics of the crash (direction of accident and how many vehicles were involved), and the characteristics of the zip code the accident happened (population, median of income per household, and percentage of zipcode that has less than a high school education, a high school education, a two-year degree, a four year degree and a post graduate degree). All of these variables might affect the odds of having a fatality. Modeling will involve the use of multiple logistic regression. We will be addressing the following areas: data management, model fitting, best subset selection, model diagnostics, and model validation.

By identifying the best factors, the selected final model might be a helpful tool in formulating cost-effective safety measures for legislation. Additionally, this model and its findings could potentially be used to develop new social programs that would pinpoint the exact areas that are in need of safety programs, which might save lives in the long term.

Keywords

Logistic regression; Logistic regression analysis; Nevada – Las Vegas; Statistics; Traffic accidents; Traffic accident victims; Traffic fatalities; Transportation

Disciplines

Applied Statistics | Demography, Population, and Ecology | Multivariate Analysis | Statistics and Probability | Transportation | Urban Studies and Planning

File Format

pdf

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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