Investigating the Effect of Light Truck Vehicle Percentages on Rear-End Fatal Traffic Crashes
This article has a reply.
VIEW THE REPLYPublication: Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 130, Issue 4
Abstract
Millions of Americans buy light truck vehicles (LTVs) each year to meet family, business, and personal travel needs. The main objective of this research is to study the effect of the increased percentage of LTVs in traffic on fatalities by manner of collision (rear-end), and also to address the impact of crash configuration (car–car, car–LTV, LTV–car, and LTV-to-LTV). This paper presents time series models that incorporate the percentage of LTVs in traffic to analyze and forecast future trends of fatality that result from rear-end collisions. A time series model was estimated to predict future LTV percentages. Future forecasts using the calibrated time series model show that the LTV percentage is expected to increase and reach 45% of the traffic stream in the United States by the year 2010. The crash analysis is based on the fatality analysis reporting system crash database covering the period of 1975–2000. A transfer function time series model with the LTV percentage as an input and annual deaths from rear-end crashes as output indicates that the annual deaths in passenger vehicles involved in rear-end collisions will be 1,004 by the year 2010 (a 5% increase compared to that of the year 2000). The analysis also showed an expected increase in the fatalities of certain configurations based on the type of vehicles involved in the crash, and indicating possible problems if the lead vehicle is an LTV and the following vehicle is a regular car.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
References
Abdel-Aty, M., and Abdelwahab, H. (2003). “Modeling rear-end collisions including the role of drivers visibility and light truck vehicles using a nested logit structure.” Accid. Anal. Prev., in press.
Abraham, B., and Ledolter, J. (1983). Statistical methods for forecasting, Wiley, New York.
Akaike, H. (1973). “Information theory and extension of the maximum likelihood principle.” 2nd Int. Symp. on Information Theory, B. N. Petrov and F. Csaki, eds., Akademiai Kiado, Budapest, 267–281.
Box, G., Jenkins, G., and Reinsel, G. (1994). Time series analysis forecasting and control, Prentice–Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.
Broyles, R., Clarke, S., Lutchmie, N., and Baker, D.(2001). “Factors contributing to the amount of vehicular damage resulting from collisions between four-wheel drive vehicles and passenger cars.” Accid. Anal. Prev., 33, 673–678.
Coalition for Vehicle Choice. (2002). 〈http://www.vehiclechoice.org/main.html〉 accessed on 3/4/02.
Gabler, H., and Hollowell, W.(2000). “The crash compatibility of cars and light trucks.” J. Crash Prev. Injury Control, 2(1), 19–31.
Green, S. (2000). “SUVs vs. cars: Size matters.” Traffic Safety Magazine, No. 3, 10–13, National Safety Council, U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Washington, D.C.
Greene, W. (2000). Econometric analysis, 4th Ed., Prentice–Hall, Upper Saddle River, N.J.
Im, E.(1994). “Unequal numbers of observations and partial efficiency gain.” Econ. Lett., 46, 291–294.
Kahane, C. (1997). “Relationships between vehicle size and fatality risk in model year 1985–1993 passenger cars and light trucks.” DOT HS 808 570, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Department of Transportation, Washington, D.C.
Makridakis, S., Wheelwright, S., and Hyndman, R. (1998). Forecasting methods and applications, 3rd Ed., Wiley, New York.
Mendenhall, W., and Sincich, T. (1994). Statistics for engineering and the sciences, 4th Ed., Prentice–Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N. J.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. (1998). Overview of vehicle compatibility issue 〈http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/cars/problems/studies/LTV/〉 accessed on 2/28/02.
Scmidt, P.(1977). “Estimation of seemingly unrelated regressions with unequal number of observations.” J. Econometr., 55, 365–377.
Siegel, H., Loo, G., Dischinger, C., and Burgess, R.(2001). “Factors influencing the patterns of injuries and outcomes in car versus car crashes compared to sport utility, van, or pick-up truck versus car crashes: Crash injury research engineering network study.” J. Trauma: Inj., Infect., Crit. Care, 51(5), 975–990.
Tessmer, J. (1999). FARS analytic reference guide 1975 to 1999, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Department of Transportation, Washington, D.C.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 130 • Issue 4 • July 2004
Pages: 419 - 428
Copyright
Copyright © 2004 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Apr 1, 2002
Accepted: Sep 8, 2003
Published online: Jun 15, 2004
Published in print: Jul 2004
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.