State Farm Reply

Identify the various constructs and concepts in the study.

Constructs are built by combining simpler, more tangible concepts when the ideas we are conveying can not be directly observed or considered abstract. Constructs help researchers eliminate ambiguity, as concepts people embrace are typically formed from their own multitude of knowledge and interpretations. Proverbs 18:15 states, “An intelligent heart acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge” (English Standard Version Bible, 2001, Proverbs 18:15). Researchers can better create concepts through experience and continually seeking knowledge to solve problems in the world. In this case study, State Farm gives a report of accidents that occur in

intersections across the nation to classify the most dangerous ones. State Farm developed a measurement system to classify the severity of the accidents and help create safer roads from their data collection. Grants worth $100,0000 are given to cities with top ten dangerous intersections. State Farm cares about its customers and wants to help states improve their intersections in order to prevent the number of accidents. 

What hypothesis might drive the research of one of the cities on the top 10 dangerous intersections list?

State Farms research provided us with the top 10 most dangerous intersections in the US based on accident reports. Traffic conflicts due to traffic volume contribute to dangerous intersections. This

hypothesis might drive the research of a city on the top 10 dangerous intersections list because they are important factors that State Farm decided not to include. State farm did not access police reports and traffic counts. Nepomuceno states, “Traffic volume reports are often prepared infrequently and often by independent sources. Not only may the data quality be questionable, but the time period in which the data was collected may not match our 1998 incident reports in every city involved” (Schindler, 2021). To avoid accessing data that lacked structure and didn’t fit their timeframe, State Farm altogether avoided collecting secondary data from police reports. Researchers only including internal incident reports in the study to ensure quality data to support the research question.  

Evaluate the methodology of State Farms research.

State Farm was able to develop a research question built upon concepts surrounding dangerous intersections. They did not have a big enough data pool and sufficient information to track accident rates at intersections, so State Farm included a location field to track intersection-related accidents. The study's sole focus was to fund road safety engineering in dangerous intersections to prevent accidents. “With a constrained range of focus, drivers are less likely to perceive the objects around them and thus more likely to brake too late for collision avoidance. Thus, a better intersection field of view can help drivers enlarge visibility at intersections in order to search for critical information, such as conflicting traffic” (Yan et al., 2016). The

study chose to ignore the severity of the accident, demographics, or geographic factors contributing to the accident. This could have altered the results but avoided any inaccurate details included in police reports. State Farm had control over extraneous variables by excluding accidents that occurred at the intersection of a road and highway access or egress ramp. The methodology used was able to reveal patterns of problems leading to intersection characteristics. Once the initial studies were completed and evaluated by the public, State Farm utilizes requests by transportation engineers to create a measurement system to classify the severity of accidents and to gain insight from the median payouts of claims between high and low severity groups.

If you were State Farm, how would you

address the concerns of transportation engineers?

Transportation engineers asked that a solution and specific steps be defined and laid out so they could fix the actual problem. Safety can be ensured by improving the factors contributing to a safety problem. When conducting a multi-level study, such as this one, there are many concerns I would need to address for transportation engineers. High-quality accident analysis would include demographic factors, geographic factors, accident rate, cost of an accident, and traffic volume. “As a traffic engineer and decision-maker during the safety analysis procedure, contributing factors such as geometric design, speed control, and traffic flow characteristics are of major concern” (Shah et al., 2019). It would be

beneficial for State Farm to first compare accidents in cities that have high and low frequencies of accidents. This will allow engineers to then implement effective ideas to mitigate vehicle accidents at intersections. Utilizing the information gathered from State Farm's first method and using that to create focus groups would be helpful to transportation engineers. 

If you were State Farm, would you use traffic volume counts as part of the 2003 study? What concerns, other than those expressed by Nepomuceno do you have?

Being focused on property loss and loss of lives is enough to gain proper insight into what State Farm can conclude as dangerous intersections. If State Farm were to gather traffic volume counts, they

would have to hire a team that is knowledgeable in traffic count methods. Nepomuceno stated that traffic volume reports are done infrequently, making State Farm the ones solely responsible for gathering accurate traffic volume counts. This would not be a cost-efficient decision for State Farm. Also, original data could be compromised, as the traffic volume counting may come with extraneous variables that we would need to then consider. I believe it would only complicate comprehensive data and be a detriment to the framework of the study, as it would cause more variables to be considered.

 

References

English Standard Version Bible. (2001).

ESV Online. https://esv.literalword.com/

Shah, S. A. R., Ahmad, N., Shen, Y., Kamal, M. A., Basheer, M. A., & Brijs, T. (2019). Relationship between road traffic features and accidents: An application of two-stage decision-making approach for transportation engineers. Journal of Safety Research, 69, 201–215. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsr.2019.01.001

Schindler, P. (2021). ISE Business Research Methods (14th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.

Yan, X., Zhang, X., Zhang, Y., Li, X., & Yang, Z. (2016). Changes in Drivers’ Visual Performance during the Collision Avoidance Process as a Function of Different Field of Views at Intersections. PLOS ONE, 11(10),

e0164101. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0164101