Abstract
Issues related to motorcycle safety in China have not received enough research attention. As such, the causal relationship between injury outcomes of motorcycle crashes and potential risk factors remains unknown. This study intended to investigate the injury risk of motorcyclists involved in road traffic crashes in China. To account for the ordinal nature of response outcomes and unobserved heterogeneity, a mixed ordered logit model was employed. Given that the crash occurrence process is different between intersections and non-intersections, separate models were developed for these locations to independently estimate the impacts of various contributing factors on motorcycle riders’ injury severity. The analysis was based on the police-reported crash dataset obtained from the Traffic Administration Bureau of Hunan Provincial Public Security Ministry. Factors associated with a substantially higher probability of fatalities and severe injuries included motorcycle riders older than 60 years, the absence of helmets, motorcycle riders identified to be equal duty, and when a motorcycle collided with a heavy vehicle during the night time without lighting. Crashes occurred along county roads with curve and slope alignment or at regions with higher GDP were associated with an elevated risk of fatality of motorcycle riders, while unsignalized intersections were related to less severe injuries. Findings of this study are beneficial in forming several targeted countermeasures for motorcycle safety in China, including designing roads with appropriate road delineation and street lighting, strict enforcement for speeding and red light violations, promoting helmet usage, and improving the conspicuity of motorcyclists.
Highlights
Motorcycle crashes are one of the leading causes of unnatural death worldwide
Results revealed that the maximum value of variance inflation factor (VIF) was 3.7 between signal control and lighting configuration, implying that no strong multi-collinearity among independent variables existed in our dataset
This study investigated the injury severity sustained by motorcycle riders involved in traffic crashes in China through an analysis of data from Hunan Province of China
Summary
Motorcycle crashes are one of the leading causes of unnatural death worldwide. Almost half of all deaths on the world’s roads are among those with the least protection: motorcyclists (23%), pedestrians (22%) and cyclists (4%) [1]. Motorcyclists accounted for 9% of road fatalities in Europe, 20% in America, and 34% in both western Pacific and southeast Asia countries [1]. As the most vulnerable road user, motorcycle riders are susceptible to being fatally injured if involved in a collision [2]. After controlling for per vehicle mile traveled, motorcyclists were reported to suffer a. 26-fold higher risk of death in a crash than those driving other types of motor vehicles [3]. Res. Public Health 2016, 13, 714; doi:10.3390/ijerph13070714 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph
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