An application of in-vehicle recording technologies to analyze injury severity in crashes between taxis and two-wheelers

Abstract

Conventionally, the crash data used in traffic safety analysis have been collected by the police dispatched to the crash scene. Therefore, crash information inevitably includes errors that influence traffic safety analysis. Such errors can include the crash speed, crash time, crash location, and other crash characteristics. The advances in in-vehicle video recording (IVVR) technologies have recently enabled traffic safety professionals to use more accurate crash information based on crash data reconstruction methods. Although a few studies have been conducted to identify the factors affecting the crash injury severity using such detailed crash data, there was no effort to analyze the factors affecting the injury severity in crashes between taxis and two-wheelers (TWs), including bicycles and motorcycles. Therefore, this study analyzes the injury severity of TW riders in taxi-TW crashes with the accurate crash data collected by taxis equipped with IVVR devices in Incheon, Korea. Two hundred and forty-eight crash data from two years (2010–2011) were used to perform this objective. The factors affecting the injury severity to TW riders were identified based on a partial proportional odds model for these data. Seven variables were found to affect the injury severity significantly: crash speed, second collision, third collision, Delta-V, crashes that occurred with a non-helmeted motorcycle rider, crashes where the collision type was sideswipe, and crashes under rainy or snowy weather conditions. On the other hand, two variables regarding crashes, where the taxi driver behavior helped reduce visible and severe injuries, were changing lanes and the young TW riders (<18 years).