The global adoption of e-scooters as a convenient mode of micro-mobility transportation is on the rise, offering a flexible solution for covering first- and last-mile journeys. However, this surge in usage brings challenges, particularly concerning road safety, as e-scooter riders often share road space with other vehicles, heightening the risk of serious accidents. While numerous studies have explored safe overtaking behaviors and safety perceptions from drivers' viewpoints, limited attention has been given to understanding the varying safety perceptions of both drivers and e-scooter riders, particularly after riding an e-scooter and being overtaken by their own vehicles.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study examines the variability in the impacts of factors influencing injury severity outcomes of elderly pedestrians (age >64) involved in vehicular crashes at intersections and non-intersections before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic. To account for unobserved heterogeneity in the crash data, a random parameters logit model with heterogeneity in the means approach is utilized to analyze vehicle-elderly pedestrian crash data from Seoul, South Korea, occurring between 2018 and 2022. Preliminary transferability tests revealed instability in factor impacts on injury severity outcomes, highlighting the need to estimate individual models across various road segments and time periods.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPersonal Mobility Devices (PMDs) have witnessed an extraordinary surge in popularity, emerging as a favored mode of urban transportation. This has sparked significant safety concerns, paralleled by a stark increase in PMD-involved crashes. Research indicates that PMD user behavior, especially in urban areas, is crucial in these crashes, underscoring the need for an extensive investigation into key factors, particularly those causing fatal/severe outcomes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPedestrians walking along the road's edge are more exposed and vulnerable than those on designated crosswalks. Often, they remain oblivious to the imminent perils of potential collisions with vehicles, making crashes involving these pedestrians relatively unique compared to others. While previous research has recognized that the surrounding lighting conditions influence traffic crashes, the effect of different lighting conditions on walking-along-the-road pedestrian injury severity outcomes remains unexplored.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: This study employs a data mining approach to discover hidden groups of crash-risk factors leading to each bus/minibus crash severity level on pothole-ridden/poor roads categorized under different lighting conditions namely daylight, night with streetlights turned on, and night with streetlights turned off/no streetlights.
Methods: The bus/minibus data employed contained 2,832 crashes observed on poor roads between 2011 and 2015, with variables such as the weather, driver, vehicle, roadway, and temporal characteristics. The data was grouped into three based on lighting condition, and the association rule data mining approach was applied.
Despite the countless benefits derived from motorcycle usage, it has become a significant public health concern, particularly in developing countries, due to the plateauing number of fatal/serious injuries associated with them. Although it has been well documented that the frequency and fatality rates of intersection-related motorcycle crashes are high, little research efforts have been made to explore the contributory factors influencing motorcycle-involved crashes at these locations. Interestingly, no study has investigated the latent patterns and chains of factors that simultaneously contribute to the injury severity sustained by motorcycle crash casualties at intersections under different traffic control conditions in developing countries.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn 2018, about 6,677 pedestrians were killed on the US roadways. Around one-fourth of these crashes happened at intersections or near intersection locations. This high death toll requires careful investigation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDeveloping countries are primarily associated with poor roadway and lighting infrastructure challenges, which has a considerable effect on their traffic accident fatality rates. These rates are further increased as bus/minibus drivers indulge in risky driving, mainly during weekends when traffic and police surveillance is low to maximise profits. Although these factors have been mentioned in the literature as key indicators influencing accident severity of buses/minibuses, there is currently no study that explored the complex mechanisms underpinning the simultaneous effect of pavement and light conditions on the generation of accident severity outcomes while considering weekly temporal stability of the accident-risk factors.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe consequences of crashes, including injury, loss of lives, and damage to properties, are further worsened when buses plying expressways are involved in the crash. Previous studies have separately analyzed crash severity in terms of monetary cost, injuries and loss of lives, and the size of crashes in terms of the number of vehicles involved. However, as both outcome variables are correlated, it is imperative to perform a combined analysis using an appropriate econometric model to achieve a better model fit.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlthough crashes involving hazardous material (HAZMAT) vehicles on expressways do not occur frequently compared with other types of vehicles, the number of lives lost and social damage is very high when a HAZMAT vehicle-involved crash occurs. Therefore, it is essential to identify the leading causes of crashes involving HAZMAT vehicles and make specific countermeasures to improve the safety of expressways. This study aims to employ the association rules mining (ARM) approach to discover the contributory crash-risk factors of HAZMAT vehicle-involved crashes on expressways.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF