Using a flexible multivariate latent class approach to model correlated outcomes: A joint analysis of pedestrian and cyclist injuries

Publication date: March 2017 Source:Analytic Methods in Accident Research, Volume 13 Author(s): Shahram Heydari, Liping Fu, Luis F. Miranda-Moreno, Lawrence Joseph Several recent transportation safety studies have indicated the importance of accounting for correlated outcomes, for example, among different crash types, including differing injury-severity levels. In this paper, we discuss inference for such data by introducing a flexible Bayesian multivariate model. In particular, we use a Dirichlet process mixture to keep the dependence structure unconstrained, relaxing the usual homogeneity assumptions. The resulting model collapses into a latent class multivariate model that is in the form of a flexible mixture of multivariate normal densities for which the number of mixtures (latent components) not only can be large but also can be inferred from the data as part of the analysis. Therefore, besides accounting for correlation among crash types through a heterogeneous correlation structure, the proposed model helps address unobserved heterogeneity through its latent class component. To our knowledge, this is the first study to propose and apply such a model in the transportation literature. We use the model to investigate the effects of various factors such as built environment characteristics on pedestrian and cyclist injury counts at signalized intersections in Montreal, modeling both outcomes simultaneously. We demonstrate that the homogeneity assumption of the standa...
Source: Analytic Methods in Accident Research - Category: Accident Prevention Source Type: research