Factors Making Young Driver Highway Crashes More Severe

Young drivers experience higher fatality involvement rates and also single vehicle crashes compared to others. When looking at the methods of improving the alarming death rate of young drivers, it is important to identify the determinants of higher crash and injury severity. This study developed a set of sequential binary logistic regression models to predict the crash severity outcome of single vehicle fixed object crashes involving young drivers. Models were organized from the lowest severity level to the highest and vice versa to examine the reliability of the selection process, but it was found that there was no considerable impact based on that. The developed models were validated and the accuracy was tested before identifying the factors influential in making a crash severity difference to young drivers. Factors such as influence of alcohol or drugs, ejection in the crash, point of impact, rural crash locations, existence of curve or grade at the crash location, and speed of the vehicle were significantly important towards increasing the probability of having a more severe crash. Restraint device usage and being a male clearly reduced the tendency of high severity and some other variables such as weather condition, residence location, and physical condition were not important at all.