The primary goal of this research is to investigate causative highway accident factors for each state route in Davidson County. In order to achieve this goal, a new methodology was developed in this research. The latest year of available accident data from the Tennessee Department of Transportation for the 20 state routes in Davidson County was used for this research.; Five methods of identifying hazardous locations (namely the accident frequency method, accident rate method, quality control method, accident severity method, and combined method) were used to identify hazardous locations for each state route. Thirteen prior causative highway accident factors (independent variables) were evaluated initially in this research. Discriminant analysis techniques were applied in a variety of ways and combinations to determine the most significant contributing causative highway accident factors for each condition.; Numerous sensitivity analysis tests were conducted to examine how causative highway accident factors vary as methods of identifying hazardous locations, the length of roadway segments, and the proportions of hazardous locations/nonhazardous locations vary. The comparison of causative highway accident factors for all 20 state routes in Davidson County, as well as for each individual state route, were evaluated using the discriminant analysis technique.; Based on the results of the most prominent causative highway accident factors, recommendations for further actions were made for each group of state routes displaying the same factor.; One conclusion from this research is that discriminant analysis techniques can be used in highway highway safety analyses to make roads safer.
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