An Investigation into the Impact of Alternate Road Lighting on Road Traffic Accident Hotspots Using Spatial Analysis

The aim of this paper is to investigate the impact of alternate road lighting (i.e. switching off every other road light at selected roadways) on road traffic accident (RTA) hotspots using Spatial Traffic Accident Analysis (STAA) - a GIS hotspot analysis method that takes into account RTA frequency and socio-economic impact. STAA was used to identify and rank into four hierarchical risk levels day-time and night-time RTA hotspots before and after the implementation of alternate road lighting along a study road. Using the day-time RTA hotspots as a comparison group and night-time RTA hotspots as treatment group, the changes to the length of RTA hotspots of the four hierarchical risk levels were evaluated. There was an overall increase in the lengths of RTA hotspots with moderate and serious risk levels, while there was an overall reduction in the lengths of RTA hotspots with minor and significant RTA risk levels. Some of the limitations of the current study were identified and further research is recommended to validate the current findings.