Traffic Safety Evaluation of the Provincial Regions in China Based on Principal Component Analysis

To evaluate the traffic safety level of the 31 provinces in China, the remarkable correlations between the number of traffic accident fatalities and social-economic factors were analyzed. According to the correlations, 8 feasible evaluation-indices were put forward, such as fatalities per 100000 people population, fatalities per 100 million GRP, passenger traffic fatalness, freight traffic fatalness, fatalities per accident, and mortality of traffic accident. And then they were transformed into three uncorrelated principal components based on principal component analysis. Finally, the 31 provinces were ranked by their evaluation score of traffic safety level estimated based on the three principal components. The results show that the traffic safety levels were markedly different in the 31 provinces and better in the developed east provinces than in the undeveloped west provinces.