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.
Highlights
Run-off-road (ROR) crashes in the United States have become a major cause of serious injuries and fatalities
Statistics based on Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) data from 2008 illustrated that fatalities due to ROR crashes in the United States were about one-third of total traffic fatalities [1]
JTTs means that they decrease the crash severity of any type. 20 explanatory variables are found to have positive coefficients for all the three models. These are driver ejection, older driver, alcohol involvement, license state, drivers at fault, medical condition for drivers as driver related factors, speed, asphalt road surface, condition of the road as road related factors, crashes due to overturn, time as crash related factors, daylight as environment related factors, SUVs, motorcycles, vehicle destroyed, vehicle disabled, vehicle straight, vehicle passing as vehicle related factors, tree and ditch as fixed objects types
Summary
Run-off-road (ROR) crashes in the United States have become a major cause of serious injuries and fatalities. For the same year (2008), percentage of ROR fatal crashes was about 66% of total fatal crashes in Kansas [2] Another statistic from Kansas Strategic Highway Safety Plan (KSHSP) demonstrated that ROR crashes accounted for 55% of all crashes involving fatal and serious injuries [3]. These statistics illustrate the fact that when it comes to crash severity, ROR crashes tend to be more severe. The percentage of possible injury crashes shows fluctuations over the years, having the highest percentage in 2001 and the lowest in 2007
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