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Abstract
Large-scale truck-involved crashes attract great attention due to their increasingly severe injuries. The majority of those crashes are passenger vehicle–truck collisions. This study intends to investigate the critical relationship between truck/passenger vehicle driver’s intentional or unintentional actions and the associated injury severity in passenger vehicle–truck crashes. A random-parameter model was developed to estimate the complicated associations between the risk factors and injury severity by using a comprehensive Virginia crash dataset. The model explored the unobserved heterogeneity while controlling for the driver, vehicle, and roadway factors. Compared with truck passengers, occupants in passenger vehicles are six times and ten times more likely to suffer minor injuries and serious/fatal injuries, respectively. Importantly, regardless of whether passenger vehicle drivers undertook intentional or unintentional actions, the crashes are more likely to associate with more severe injury outcomes. In addition, crashes occurring late at night and in early mornings are often correlated with more severe injuries. Such associations between explanatory factors and injury severity are found to vary across the passenger vehicle–truck crashes, and such significant variations of estimated parameters further confirmed the validity of applying the random-parameter model. More implications based on the results and suggestions in terms of safe driving are discussed.
Highlights
The economic impacts and safety hazards resulting from truck-involved crashes highlight freight transportation safety as a contemplative societal concern [1,2]
This study contributes by quantifying associations of intentional and unintentional improper actions of truck and passenger vehicle drivers and driver condition with injury severity outcomes in passenger vehicle–truck collisions
The study explicitly accounts for unobserved heterogeneity and finds that some of the correlates have both positive and negative associations with injury severity
Summary
The economic impacts and safety hazards resulting from truck-involved crashes highlight freight transportation safety as a contemplative societal concern [1,2]. From 2014 to 2015, the vehicle miles traveled by large trucks (gross vehicle weight > 10,000 pounds) increased by 0.3%, while the number of fatal large truck-involved crashes increased by 8% [3]. From an injury severity perspective, in 2014, a total of 3600 people died in large truck-involved crashes, out of which 16% were truck occupants and 68% were occupants of passenger vehicles [5]. Most of the truck-involved crashes involve multiple vehicles, two-vehicle passenger vehicle–truck collisions often contribute to the majority (about 48%) of total fatal crashes according to the 2017 Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) on fatal truck-involved crashes. In 2014, two-thirds of all police-reported crashes involved a truck and another vehicle [6], and 63% of the fatal large truck crashes involved two vehicles [6]. Public Health 2019, 16, 3542; doi:10.3390/ijerph16193542 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph
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