The Effect of Road Shoulder and Weather Conditions on the Occurrence of Rollover Crashes in Two-lane Highways

Abstract

Rollover crash is a type of dangerous crash that occurs often in two-lane highways. Therefore, this study evaluates the effect of road shoulder and weather condition on rollover crashes. Crash data show that 8,609 crashes were recorded from 2006 to 2009 on six two-lane highways located at the center of Iran. This data contains 1860 rollover crashes. Rollover crash in this paper not included the head on crashes and fixed object crashes. Therefore the rollover crashes are only single vehicle crashes. Binary logit was selected for modelling since there were two possible outcomes: rollover crashes and other crash types. The variables of the final model include highway class, road shoulder width, as well as rainy, snowy, foggy and night conditions. The modeling results show that rainy and foggy variables, with coefficients of 0.731 and 0.719 respectively, had the greatest effects on rollover crash occurrence. Also, road shoulder width and night conditions, with coefficients of 0.221 and 0.184 respectively, had the least effects on rollover crash occurrence. Afterward, sensitivity analysis was performed on all the independent variables, and the results show variable variation and indicate that the probability of rollover crash occurrence is 21.29 % on the mentioned highway.