Working Paper BETA #2000-11

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Title : SNUS-2.5, a Multimoment Analysis of Road Demand, Accidents and their Severity in Germany, 1968 – 1989

Author(s) : Ulrich Blum, Marc Gaudry

Abstract : The present article presents an improved and refined version of the SNUS-1 model (GAUDRY and BLUM 1993) documented only in French. The greatest difficulty faced in the development of the model did not have to do with structure – the multilevel structure is straightforward – but with the specification of the employment activity variable, due to the specifics of the German economy,and with the proper formulation of the role of vehicle stocks in the road demand models. Moreover,we consider the following aspects to be special in the context of an analysis of Germany: • there exist no general speed limits on motorways, i.e. about 70% allow unlimited speed today,and in the Sixties, when our analysis starts, this share was even higher; • the country is large compared with other regions were the DRAG-methodology is employed, and it possesses high car ownership levels and an important car industry that sees the German infrastructure as an appropriate testing ground; • Germany is poly-central, its infrastructure resembles a grid, whereas France’s is almost a huband-spoke system, as compared for instance to Norway’s line; • unification is not yet included because of lagging data availability and, thus, problems to compensate for the structural break in data series.

Key-words : NA

JEL Classification : NA