Identifying the Factors Contributing to Injury Severity in Work Zone Rear-End Crashes

Abstract

Egypt’s National Road Project is a large infrastructure project aiming to upgrade the existing network of 2500 kilometers as well as constructing new roads of 4000 kilometers to meet today’s need. Increasing highway work zones eventually direct the challenges for traffic safety and mobility. Realizing the need for mitigating the impact of such a challenging scenario, this paper aims to investigate and identify the factors of work zone rear-end crash severity. In this regard, a random parameter ordered probit model was applied to analyze data on the Egyptian long-term highway work zone projects during the period of 2010 to 2017. The factors of speeding and foggy weather conditions are found to be the key indicators for modeling the random parameters. Besides, during the weekend and at nighttime, there is a higher risk of rear-end crash in work zones, while heavy and passenger vehicles are at greater risk in this regard. It is anticipated that the findings of this study would facilitate transport agencies in developing effective measures to ensure safe mobility across work zones.

Investigation on the Injury Severity of Drivers in Rear-End Collisions Between Cars Using a Random Parameters Bivariate Ordered Probit Model

“…The outcome of injury for drivers in rear vehicles in a summer day or on a snowy road surface also increased, indicating a time-relation with the crash injury. Similar results have been presented about these effects on injury severity in previous studies [5,11,32,33,34]. One interesting result is that converse effects by crash position on two drivers can be found: when crashes occur in Midwest of the USA, drivers in front vehicles are prone to suffer a more severe injury, while drivers in rear vehicles sustain less injury.…”

“…For instance, lower level of injury had been found in the crashes during the winter month and relative researches attributed this to lower speed and more cautious drivers on a winter day [11]; this may explain why lower injury severity would be sustained by drivers in rear vehicles on a snowy road surface condition as shown in Table 3. Summer season and nighttime had been found to be significantly associated with the injury severity, causing a positive effect on the possibility of the injuries [5]. Moreover, both drivers seemed to suffer a more severe injury when light level that existed at the time of the crash is daylight.…”

“…As one of the main concerns of the rear-end collision, drivers’ injury severity is influenced by many contributing factors, such as roadway alignments, environment characteristics, driver characteristics, traffic flow, etc. Accordingly, it is necessary to identify the factors related to rear-end crashes and having a comprehensive knowledge of these factors’ potential positive or negative effects is essential to prevent crashes and reduce injury severities [5].…”

“…To address this correlation, the bivariate ordered probit model was proposed and two dependent variables were designed for each crash. Furthermore, compared with the fixed-parameter model, the random-parameter regression model is often adopted, because the unobserved heterogeneity issues can be addressed by allowing parameters to vary across observations [2,5,31].…”

Crash severity analysis of nighttime and daytime highway work zone crashes

“…Many researchers have found an increase in both crash frequency and severity in the nighttime [8,18–22]. For instance, Johansson et al reported an increase in crash injury risk at night in urban, rural, and both area types together of 30%, 50% and 40%, respectively.…”