TITLE:
Crash Severity Analysis of Single Vehicle Run-off-Road Crashes
AUTHORS:
Sunanda Dissanayake, Uttara Roy
KEYWORDS:
Run-off-Road Crashes; Crash Severity; Single-Vehicle Crashes
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Transportation Technologies,
Vol.4 No.1,
January
15,
2014
ABSTRACT:
Run-off-road crashes in the United States have become a
major cause of serious injuries and fatalities. A significant portion
of run-off-road crashes are single vehicle crashes that occur due to
collisions with fixed objects and overturning. These crashes typically tend to
be more severe than other types of crashes. Single vehicle run-off-road crashes
that occurred between 2004 and 2008 were extracted from Kansas Accident
Reporting System (KARS) database to identify the important factors that affected their severity. Different driver, vehicle, road,
crash, and environment related factors that influence
crash severity are identified by using binary logit models. Three models were
developed to take different levels of crash severity as the response variables. The
first model taking fatal or incapacitating crashes as the response variable
seems to better fit the data than the other two developed models. The variables
that were found to increase the probability of run-off-road crash severity are
driver related factors such as driver ejection, being an older driver, alcohol
involvement, license state, driver being at fault, medical condition of the
driver; road related factors such as speed, asphalt road surface, dry road
condition; time related factors such as crashes occurring between 6 pm and
midnight; environment related factors such as daylight; vehicle related
factors such as being an SUV, motorcycles, vehicle getting destroyed or
disabled, vehicle maneuver being straight or passing; and fixed object types
such as trees and ditches.