Influence of socio-economic and demographic factors on crashes in rural South Carolina at sub-county level

The State of South Carolina ranks high in crash fatality rates. The State is a predominately rural state with significant mileage of rural roads. This thesis focuses on identifying how the socio-economic and demographic character of rural areas in South Carolina may affect crash incidence.; Crash data for the year 2004 was acquired from South Carolina Department of Transportation and was processed and geo-coded into a geographic information system. Spatial analysis is used to aggregate crash data to rural census block groups. Crash rates are developed in terms of the number of injury and fatal crashes (severe crashes) per 1000 persons of driver age for each block group in South Carolina.; A sample of block groups, with high crash incidences was identified. These unusually high incidence block groups are further investigated to identify potential causal factors that may be related to the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of the areas. This is done by comparing the crash rate and socio economic distributions of block groups with the corresponding distributions of the state.