Aberrant Behaviours of Drivers Involved in Crashes and Related Injury Severity: Are there Variations between the Major Cities in the Same Country?

Fonzone, Achille

Abstract

Crash data analyses based on accident datasets often do not include human-related variables because they can be hard to reconstruct from crash data. However, records of crash circumstances can help for this purpose since crashes can be classified considering aberrant behavior and misconduct of the drivers involved. In this case, urban crash data from the ten largest Italian cities were used to develop four logistic regression models having the driver-related crash circumstance (aberrant behaviors: inattentive driving, illegal maneuvering, wrong interaction with pedestrian and speeding) as dependent variable and the other crash-related factors as predictors (information about the users and the vehicles involved and about road geometry and conditions). Other two models were built to study the influence of the same factors on the injury severity of the occupants of vehicles for which crash circumstances related to driver aberrant behaviors were observed and of the involved pedestrians. The variability between the ten different cities was considered through a multilevel approach, which however revealed a significant variability only for the inattention-related crash circumstance. In the other models, the variability between cities was not significant, indicating quite homogeneous results within the same country. The results show several relationships between crash factors (driver, vehicle or road-related) and human-related crash circumstances and severity. Unsignalized intersections were particularly related to the illegal maneuvering crash circumstance, while the night period was clearly related to the speeding-related crash circumstance and to injuries/casualties of vehicle occupants. Cyclists and motorcyclists were shown to suffer more injuries/casualties than car occupants, while the latter were generally those exhibiting more aberrant behavior. Pedestrian casualties were associated with arterial roads, heavy vehicles and older pedestrians.

Citation

Fonzone, A. (2024). Aberrant Behaviours of Drivers Involved in Crashes and Related Injury Severity: Are there Variations between the Major Cities in the Same Country?. Journal of Safety Research, 89, 64-82. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsr.2024.01.010

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Nov 6, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Feb 9, 2024
• Publication Date: 2024-06
• Deposit Date: Nov 14, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 9, 2024
• Print ISSN: 0022-4375
• Electronic ISSN: 1879-1247
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 89
• Pages: 64-82
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsr.2024.01.010
• Keywords: Urban crashes, Human factors, Aberrant behavior, Multilevel approach, Crash circumstances
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/3384670
• Publisher URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-safety-research