Injury Severity of Multivehicle Crash in Rainy Weather
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 138, Issue 1
Abstract
As part of the Wisconsin road weather safety initiative, the objective of this study was to microscopically assess the factor effects on the severities of multivehicle-involved crashes on high-speed roadways during rainfall utilizing a sequential logistic regression approach. Research began by considering interstate freeways in Wisconsin. Weather-related factors considered in the research included estimated rainfall intensity, water film depth, temperature, wind speed and direction, and the car-following distance at the time of crash. With each crash observation, weather data were obtained through the three most adjacent weather station locations and the inverse-squared distance method. Nonweather factors such as roadway geometries, traffic conditions, collision manners, vehicle types, and driver and temporal attributes were also considered. Sequential logistic regression was applied to predict multivehicle crash severities in ascending (forward) and descending (backward) orders, respectively. The final model was selected on the basis of a combination of model performance, parameter significance, and prediction accuracies. The backward sequential logistic regression model produced the most desirable results for predicting crash severities in rainy weather in which deficiency of car following, wind speed, the first harmful spot, vehicle types, temporal, and at-fault driver-related actions at the crash moment were found to be statistically significant. These findings can be used to provide quantitative support of road weather safety improvements via weather warning systems, highway infrastructure enhancements, and traffic management.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea. Grant funded by the Korean Government (UNSPECIFIEDNRF-2009-413-D00001).
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Information
Published In
Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 138 • Issue 1 • January 2012
Pages: 50 - 59
Copyright
© 2012 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Feb 20, 2010
Accepted: May 19, 2011
Published online: Dec 15, 2011
Published in print: Jan 1, 2012
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