Comparisons of Traffic Collisions between Expressways and Rural Roads in Truck Drivers

BACKGROUND: Truck driving is known as one of the occupations with the highest accident rate. This study investigates the characteristics of traffic collisions according to road types (expressway and rural road). METHODS: Classifying 267 accidents into expressway and rural road, we analyzed them based on driver characteristics (age, working experience, size of employment), time characteristics (day of accident, time, weather), and accident characteristics (accident causes, accident locations, accident types, driving conditions). RESULTS: When we compared the accidents by road conditions, no differences were found between the driver characteristics. However, from the accident characteristics, the injured person distributions were different by the road conditions. In particular, driving while drowsy is shown to be highly related with the accident characteristics. CONCLUSION: This study can be used as a guideline and a base line to develop a plan of action to prevent traffic accidents. It can also help to prepare formal regulations about a truck driver's vehicle maintenance and driving attitude for a precaution on road accidents.