Accident Severity in The United States of America

Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2008

Identifying the factors that significantly affect accident severity has become one of the many ways to reduce it. While many accident database studies have reported associations between factors and severities, few of them could assert causality, primarily because of uncontrolled confounding effects. This research is an attempt to resolve the issue by comparing the difference between what happened and what would have happened in different circumstances. Data on accidents were analyzed first with rough set theory to determine whether they included complete information about the circumstances of their occurrence by an accident database. The derived circumstances were then compared with each other. For those remaining accidents without sufficient information, logistic regression models were employed to investigate possible associations. Adopting the 2005 Taiwan single-auto-vehicle accident data set, the empirical study showed that an accident could be fatal mainly because of a combinati...

paper, 2019

As a matter of growing machinery life, traffic crashes are considered an inevitable source of injuries and costs around the world. Regarding to increasing traffic accident outcomes, controlling the current status is necessary. In this way, identifying risk factors affecting the crash severity is an essential step toward initiating a convincing solution. The core objective of this study was to categorize the risk factors affecting the severity of crashes. Data needed for this study were gathered through searching Web of Science, Google Scholar, and Science Direct databases using the keywords included fatal and crash, injuries and crash, fatal and traffic accident, and injuries and traffic accident. Based on 83 selected studies for review, factors affecting the crash severity divided into five factors and forty-seven sub-factors. The most prevalent sub-factors were age, sex, safety belts, alcohol and drug use, speed, weather conditions, lighting conditions, time of the day and week, v...

Annual proceedings / Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine. Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine, 2003

The advent of Automatic Crash Notification Systems (ACN) offers the possibility of immediately locating crashes and of determining the crash characteristics by analyzing the data transmitted from the vehicle. A challenge to EMS decision makers is to identify those crashes with serious injuries and deploy the appropriate rescue and treatment capabilities. The objective of this paper is to determine the crash characteristics that increase the risk of serious injury. Within this paper, regression models are presented which relate occupant, vehicle and impact characteristics to the probability of serious injury using the Maximum Abbreviated Injury Scale Level (MAIS). The accuracy of proposed models were evaluated using National Automotive Sampling System/ Crashworthiness Data System (NASS/CDS) and Crash Injury Research and Engineering Network (CIREN) case data. Cumulatively, the positive prediction rate of models identifying the likelihood of MAIS3 and higher injuries was 74.2%. Crash m...

2008

The aim of this study was to develop a methodology that would better focus scarce road safety resources to fix those areas of the road network that have the greatest number of fatal and serious injury crashes. Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is used to prioritise black spot projects with the economic benefit of a remedial treatment being the difference between predicted costs of crashes with and without the proposed treatment. This was found to have practical implications for improving the prioritisation of road safety crash reduction programs. Categories of crashes were identified, based on differences in average severity and their relevance to possible treatments. The analysis demonstrates the higher priority of projects that address more severe crashes when crash values are determined using: 1. RUM codes rather than DCA codes to include run-off-road on bend crash type codes that indicate the side of the road which the vehicle went off; 2. three speed limit groups rather than two; 3. ...

1999

Proceedings of the ICE - Transport, 2013

Modelling of traffic accidents injury severity is a complex task. In the last few years the number and variety of studies that analyse injury severity of traffic accidents have increased considerably. In this paper 19 modelling techniques used to model injury severity of traffic accidents where at least a 4-wheeled vehicle is involved have been analysed. The analysis and the comparison between models was performed based on seven criteria (modelling technique, number of records, number of variables, area type, features, injury level and model fit). In general, it is not possible to recommend a method that could be identified as the best one. Each modelling technique has its own limitations and characteristics, awareness of which will help analysts to decide the best method to be used in each particular modelling problem. However, some general conclusions can be established: in most cases the results of models' fits are found to be satisfactory, though not excellent; in the case of data mining models, accuracy improves with balanced datasets; and no correlation was found to exist between the number of accident records and the number of analysed variables.

The NHMRC Road Accident Research Unit (RARU) was funded by the Motor Accident Commission in 1997 to investigate the role of roadside hazards in road accidents resulting in death or serious injury to a car occupant in South Australia. The main aim of this project was to document the extent to which roadside hazards contribute to severe and fatal car crashes in South Australia and to comment on the opportunities that exist to make our roadsides safer. A secondary aim of the project was to conduct investigations in such a way as to provide for the training of engineers from Transport SA in the recognition of hazardous roadside features and an appreciation of their importance in road safety. The study was based on information contained in the Traffic Accident Reporting System data base on road accidents reported to or by the Police and on information in Coronial records of fatal crashes. Some roadside hazard crashes were also investigated at the scene. We found that: Roadside hazards were the immediate cause of at least one death in 40 per cent of all crashes in which a car occupant was fatally injured in South Australia from 1985 to 1996. Collisions with roadside hazards were the immediate cause of 39 per cent of all car occupant deaths during those years. Roadside hazards also played a role in 38 per cent of all car crashes in which an occupant was admitted to hospital in South Australia from 1994 to 1996. Countermeasures aimed at reducing travelling speed, drink driving, and driver fatigue are likely to decrease the frequency of roadside hazard crashes, probably to a greater degree than crashes in general. However, reliance on attempts to change driver behaviour alone will not be an adequate response to the dangers presented by roadside hazards. This study has shown that the investigation and monitoring of the causes and consequences of road crashes in South Australia is hampered by the inadequacies of the main source of data, the Traffic Accident Reporting System.

Health in Emergencies & Disasters Quarterly

Background: Every year many people are killed or injured in road accidents. The first step in planning to reduce accidents is to identify the causes of accidents. This study aimed to investigate and identify the causes and factors affecting the incidence and the severity of road accidents as a major issue in Ilam Province, Iran. Materials and Methods: This research is a descriptive study with an analytical approach. Descriptive and inferential statistics indices were used for statistical analysis. A researcher-made questionnaire as fieldwork was used to investigate the factors affecting accidents. Friedman test was used in the analytical study of the data obtained from the questionnaires. The study population included all drivers of the public suburban fleet, including taxis, minibusses, and buses on the Ilam Province. Out of 190 drivers, a sample size of 127 was selected using a Cochran formula. Results: From the drivers’ point of view, the main causes of public fleet accidents on ...

Roadside designer have used the Severity Index (SI) approach to model roadside hazard severity for some time. SI is a linear function of speed and the slope values for the SI curves were based primarily on engineering judgment. While this approach to determining crash severity has been widely used, it has never been validated or compared to real-world crash data because there were no crash databases available with reconstructed impact speeds that could be used to check the validity of the SI-speed relationship. This paper reviews the traditional SI approach results compared to collected crash data from the NCHRP 17-22 crash database and presents a new approach for estimating crash severity proposed for use in the updated version of RSAP. The Effective Fatal Crash Cost Ratio (EFCCR) is proposed to replace the SI in the updated version of RSAP. The EFCCR uses the severity distribution of reported crashes for any hazard, adjusted for unreported crashes, then divides the average crash cost calculated for any particular year by the cost of a fatal crash in that same year creating a dimensionless measure of risk. This dimensionless value allows for direct comparison of hazard severity between roadside hazards.