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Topic · Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality

Traffic and Road Safety

Traffic and Road Safety is a research topic within Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality. Science Explorer counts 35k research works in it since 1950. 10.0% of them reached the world's top 10% most cited for their field and year.

This cluster of papers focuses on the analysis of traffic safety, driver behavior, and injury severity in road accidents. It covers topics such as crash prediction models, risk factors for traffic accidents, pedestrian safety, spatial analysis of road accidents, and the impact of traffic congestion on road safety.

  • Traffic Accidents
  • Driver Behavior
  • Injury Severity
  • Road Safety
  • Pedestrian Safety
  • Crash Prediction Models
  • Risk Factors
  • Spatial Analysis
  • Traffic Congestion
  • Simulation Models
Research works
35k
fractional, since 1950
In the world top 10%
3.5k
per year above
Top-10% rate
10.0%
share of its works in the world top 10%
Growth, 2018-21 → 2022-25
+15%
the tick is no change
Largest producer
China
31% of the 10 largest, 2022-now
Traffic and Road Safety

Which countries lead Traffic and Road Safety research?

By volume, China and the United States publish the most (2k and 1.8k works in 2022-now).

By volume, 2022-now

  1. 1 China 2k works
  2. 2 United States 1.8k works
  3. 3 India 714 works
  4. 4 Australia 323 works
  5. 5 United Kingdom 315 works
  6. 6 Canada 296 works
  7. 7 Germany 264 works
  8. 8 Japan 219 works
  9. 9 South Korea 201 works
  10. 10 Indonesia 194 works

How concentrated that is

The same countries as shares of everything the list above accounts for. A node where two countries do two thirds of the work and one spread evenly across twelve read alike as a ranking and not at all alike here.

China: 31.4%United States: 28.9%India: 11.2%Australia: 5.1%6 others listed: 23.4%31%largest
China1,998 · 31.4%United States1,835 · 28.9%India714 · 11.2%Australia323 · 5.1%6 others listed1,488 · 23.4%

Shares of the rows listed above, not of the whole node.

Which institutions lead Traffic and Road Safety research?

By volume in 2022-now, Tongji University publishes the most Traffic and Road Safety research, followed by Southeast University and Chang'an University.

By volume, 2022-now

  1. 1 Tongji UniversityChina 103 works
  2. 2 Southeast UniversityChina 78 works
  3. 3 Chang'an UniversityChina 74 works
  4. 4 Tsinghua UniversityChina 66 works
  5. 5 University of Central FloridaUnited States 53 works
  6. 6 Delft University of TechnologyNetherlands 53 works
  7. 7 Wuhan University of TechnologyChina 50 works
  8. 8 Queensland University of TechnologyAustralia 48 works
  9. 9 Southwest Jiaotong UniversityChina 43 works
  10. 10 Central South UniversityChina 43 works

Who are the leading researchers in Traffic and Road Safety?

The most-cited researchers publishing on Traffic and Road Safety include Christopher J L Murray, Simon Iain Hay and Theo Vos.

  1. 1 Christopher J L Murray United States 583k citations
  2. 2 Simon Iain Hay United States 452k citations
  3. 3 Theo Vos United States 439k citations
  4. 4 George Davey Smith United Kingdom 435k citations
  5. 5 Ali H. Mokdad United States 429k citations
  6. 6 Walter Churchill Willett United States 411k citations
  7. 7 Robert John Tibshirani United States 396k citations
  8. 8 Zulfiqar Ahmed Bhutta Pakistan 371k citations
  9. 9 Ronald C. Kessler United States 360k citations
  10. 10 Farshad Farzadfar Iran 298k citations

Ranked by citations received across their whole record, among researchers with at least three works on this topic.

What are the most cited papers in Traffic and Road Safety?

The most cited paper in Traffic and Road Safety is "Travel and the Built Environment" (Reid Ewing, Robert Cervero, 2010), with 5,353 citations. Next come "Congested traffic states in empirical observations and microscopic simulations" (4,784) and "AUC: a misleading measure of the performance of predictive distribution models" (3,552).

Most cited papers
#PaperReleasedCitations
1 Travel and the Built Environment Reid Ewing, Robert Cervero · Journal of the American Planning Association 13 May 2010 5,353
2 Congested traffic states in empirical observations and microscopic simulations Martin Treiber, Ansgar Hennecke, Dirk Helbing · Physical review. E, Statistical physics, plasmas, fluids, and related interdisciplinary topics Open access Aug 2000 4,784
3 AUC: a misleading measure of the performance of predictive distribution models Jorge Miguel Lobo, Alberto Jiménez‐Valverde, Raimundo Real · Global Ecology and Biogeography 14 Sep 2007 3,552
4 Preparing a nation for autonomous vehicles: opportunities, barriers and policy recommendations Daniel J. Fagnant, Kara Maria Kockelman · Transportation Research Part A Policy and Practice 15 May 2015 3,145
5 Environmental correlates of walking and cycling: Findings from the transportation, urban design, and planning literatures Brian E. Saelens, James F. Sallis, Lawrence Douglas Frank · Annals of Behavioral Medicine Apr 2003 2,330
All 100 most cited papers, with filters and sorting

Where is Traffic and Road Safety research done?

The largest centres of Traffic and Road Safety research in 2022-now are Beijing (China), Shanghai (China), Nanjing (China) and Xi'an (China). Among places with at least 20 works in it, it is an unusually large share of all research in San Marcos and Nakhon Ratchasima.

Largest cities, 2022-now

  1. 1 BeijingChina 394 works
  2. 2 ShanghaiChina 191 works
  3. 3 NanjingChina 155 works
  4. 4 Xi'anChina 108 works
  5. 5 WuhanChina 95 works
  6. 6 SeoulSouth Korea 92 works
  7. 7 ChongqingChina 87 works
  8. 8 ChangshaChina 85 works
  9. 9 MelbourneAustralia 82 works
  10. 10 TokyoJapan 81 works

Where it is the local speciality

  1. San MarcosUS · 25.0 works23×
  2. Nakhon RatchasimaTH · 22.7 works16×
← less than its size predicts1×more →

Location quotient: how much more of its research is in Traffic and Road Safety than the world average.

See Traffic and Road Safety on the map

Where is the best place to study Traffic and Road Safety?

Among universities, judged by research, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Southeast University and University of Central Florida score highest, combining excellence, specialisation, size, growth and international reach. Research strength is one signal when choosing where to study; it does not measure teaching.

0%20%40%mean 24.14%fractional works in this field (log) →share of work in the world top 10% →Hong Kong Polytechni…University of Centra…Southeast UniversityTongji University
above the meannear itbelow it

One dot per university in the first ten of the table below, at the default weights. The upper left is the interesting corner: small places doing unusually strong work.

Excellenceshare of its work in the world top 10%, 2022-now and all time averaged
40%
Specialisationhow much of its work is in this field, counted up to 10× the world share
10%
Sizeits output in this field, on a log scale
30%
Growthoutput growth, counted from -20% to +20%
10%
Internationalshare of its work with a co-author abroad
10%
Each slider sets a weight; the share it gets of the score is beside it.
#UniversityScoreTop 10%SpecialisationWorksGrowth
1Hong Kong Polytechnic UniversityChina 80.433.0%3.9×28 +65.3%
2Southeast UniversityChina 76.523.8%6.4×78 +23.0%
3University of Central FloridaUnited States 76.225.1%17.5×54 +9.8%
4Tongji UniversityChina 73.919.9%8.1×103 +13.7%
5Delft University of TechnologyNetherlands 70.320.8%9.4×53 +5.3%
6Central South UniversityChina 68.923.0%2.7×43 +42.9%
7City University of Hong KongChina 68.827.8%3.0×14 +38.3%
8Tsinghua UniversityChina 68.620.1%3.5×66 +34.0%
9Wuhan University of TechnologyChina 68.222.3%7.5×50 +83.9%
10Indian Institute of Technology RoorkeeIndia 65.525.6%6.4×24 +112.0%

Universities only. The score blends excellence (40%), size (30%), specialisation (10%), growth (10%), international reach (10%), 2022-now; growth compares 2018-21 with 2022-25 and counts up to +20%, since a jump from a small base is mostly noise.

Every institution in Traffic and Road Safety, country by country

Is Traffic and Road Safety research growing?

Output in 2022-2025 was 15% higher than in 2018-2021, peaking in 2022. The fastest-growing topics are Traffic and Road Safety.

still counting19801990200020102020
grewheldshrank

The same series as a ribbon: one cell per year, darker for more. The line above answers how much; this answers when.

Its share of all research

Growing output can still be a shrinking share: all of science grows. This is Traffic and Road Safety as a percentage of every work published that year, 0.038% in 2024.

still counting0.020%0.040%0.060%Traffic and Road Safety0.038% in 202519801990200020102020

Fractional works of Traffic and Road Safety over all fractional works that year. How the balance of science has shifted.

How much of it reaches the world top 10%

Year by year.

still counting5%10%15%Traffic and Road Safety10.0% in 2025200020102020

Of each year's works in it, the share that reached the world's 10% most cited for their field and year. A field is the world for its own topics, so there is no other line to hold it against.

Which topics inside it are moving

Growth and decline on one axis around a shared zero. Two lists side by side hide the thing that matters: whether the growth dwarfs the decline, or the other way round.

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