FURTHER RESEARCH AND LIMITATIONS

This research contributes several techniques which can be attributed to traffic safety mapping in general. The concepts regarding spatial autocorrelation and interpolation, though known in the field, are coupled in a way that spatial and temporal information can be readily drawn from and studied for similar datasets. This research could be taken further by incorporating a more specific dataset containing more information about the crash locations. Also, knowing more specific information about the crash regarding, for example, age, gender, and time could greatly alleviate the steps taken towards drawing solid conclusions.

Until every vehicle is equipped with a crash monitoring and recording system, police officers are trained to record the level of data needed by GIS analysts, and organizations are organized to the point that data is up to date and readily available, traffic safety in regards to the research conducted here will have several limitations. This

need of a more detailed dataset was perhaps the greatest limitation in this study. The fact that aggregated datasets were used at a relatively small scale, for example with more detail than state or national-level studies but less than census tracts, made it difficult to conclude in favor of the proposed hypothesis that crashes were declining as a result of changes spatially and temporally partially respect to those chosen variables. Another limitation was due in part to the complexity of crashes. For example, simply attributing age, gender, location, and population as independent variables cannot fully explain the spatial and temporal variations of traffic crashes. Another limitation stems from the fact that, although crashes were a positive BAC was established were considered alcohol-related, the possibility that the driver died from consequences completely unrelated to alcohol is a possibility. It is believed that a BAC as low as 0.01% can have adverse effects for some, although for most a BAC that low often does not impair driving. It is also important to point out that Texas has wet, partially wet, and dry county laws in regards to allowing or prohibiting the sale of alcoholic beverage. Though the definition of each, respectively, seems rather obvious whereby wet counties, the technicalities and legislations involved in formulating which county falls under which category is rather difficult. For example, various counties may be partially wet in that some of the cities within it are wet or dry. This makes it difficult to assign a single category to various counties. This research also did not put into account the various laws which were discussed in the literature review (21 and up, zero tolerance etc). Finally, aside from Moran’s I values indicating the significance of clustering, conclusions were drawn

without the use of rigorous statistical procedures commonly discussed within the traffic safety literature.

5.3 CONCLUSION

Although traffic safety is a broad and extensive field of research, geography plays an important role in understanding complex relationships between the many variables that play a role in traffic crashes. Understanding the spatial variation of the dependent and independent variables through time and space is a critical part of traffic safety research. GIS is becoming more than a simple tool adopted in traffic safety research and the advances that have been made in recent years are a sure sign that geography continues to contribute imperative information to the field. Digital maps continue to gain importance and respect as representations of space and designated factors which are critical to traffic safety. These methodologies built from advances in geographic knowledge and techniques will continue to contribute a great amount of information for a variety of sectors from civil engineering to traffic safety administration.

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VITA

Gabriel A. Rolland received his Bachelor of Science degree in geography from Texas A&M University in December 2005. Prior to graduation, he studied geography while focusing on GIS and cartography. Furthermore, he earned several awards including an induction into the International Geographical Honor Society in 2004 and a Distinguished Student Award in 2003. He entered the geography program at Texas A&M University in August 2006 and received his Master of Science degree in geography on December 2008. His research interests include GIS analysis, traffic safety, remote sensing, and both physical and human geography. He plans to publish one or more research articles on these topics, focusing on alcohol crashes in Texas. Finally, he hopes to pursue an interest in meteorology concerning natural disasters and modeling, forecasting, and emergency preparedness.

Name: Gabriel A. Rolland

Address: 10696 Edenoaks St., San Diego, California 92131 Email Address: [email protected]

Education: B.S., Geography, Texas A&M University, 2005 M.S., Geography, Texas A&M University, 2008