Modelling Road Accident Blackspots Data with the Discrete Generalized Pareto distribution

This study shows how road traffic networks events, in particular road accidents on blackspots, can be modelled with simple probabilistic distributions. We considered the number of accidents and the number of deaths on Spanish blackspots in the period 2003-2007, from Spanish General Directorate of Traffic (DGT). We modelled those datasets, respectively, with the discrete generalized Pareto distribution (a discrete parametric model with three parameters) and with the discrete Lomax distribution (a discrete parametric model with two parameters, and particular case of the previous model). For that, we analyzed the basic properties of both parametric models: cumulative distribution, survival, probability mass, quantile and hazard functions, genesis and rth-order moments; applied two estimation methods of their parameters: the $\mu$ and ($\mu+1$) frequency method and the maximum likelihood method; and used two goodness-of-fit tests: Chi-square test and discrete Kolmogorov-Smirnov test based on bootstrap resampling. We found that those probabilistic models can be useful to describe the road accident blackspots datasets analyzed.