<jats:p> Accident severity prediction is increasingly important for preventing and reducing traffic accident losses. However, many studies always ignore the complex relationship between features during feature selection. To improve the prediction accuracy of the accident severity prediction model, this paper considers the interactions between multiple features. First, the feature selection algorithm of Recursive Feature Elimination with Cross-Validation (RFECV) is improved by using Shapley Additive explanations (SHAP) as the feature importance assessment metric. Then, to decrease the time expense of manually finding hyperparameters of the model, the Hunter Prey Optimization (HPO) algorithm is introduced and logistic mapping together with stochastic perturbation is added to it, which makes it easier to skip out of the partial optimum during the optimization search. Finally, the improved HPO algorithm is used to optimize the hyperparameters of the CatBoost model. The US traffic accident dataset is introduced for the validity of the proposed framework. Experimental results show that the proposed framework achieves a prediction accuracy of 96.63%, which is better than other state-of-the-art methods. The high accuracy of the prediction model can help decision-makers develop more rational transportation policies, and this study also proposes some traffic management measures based on the selected features. </jats:p>