Exploring Factors Influencing Injury Severity of Vehicle At-Fault Accidents: A Comparative Analysis of Passenger and Freight Vehicles

The objective of this study is to find factors influencing the injury severity of vehicle at-fault accidents in Shenyang (China), and discuss the commonalities and differences between passenger and freight vehicle accidents. We analyzed 1647 traffic accidents from 2015 to 2017, in which motor vehicles were fully or mainly responsible, including 1164 traffic accidents caused by passenger vehicles and 483 traffic accidents caused by freight vehicles. Twenty influencing factors from the aspects of accident, driver, time, space and environmental attributes are analyzed to find their statistical connection with injury severity using the binary logistic regression model. For passenger vehicles, five influencing factors (side collision; illegal act while driving; hit-and-run; season and administrative division), showed statistically significant correlations with the injury severity. For freight vehicles, three influencing factors (illegal act while driving; season and administrative division), showed statistically significant correlations with the injury severity. Illegal act while driving is the only common influencing factor for the injury severity of both passenger and freight vehicle accidents. Side collision and hit-and-run are significant influencing factors for the injury severity of passenger vehicle accidents, but not for freight vehicle accidents. Season and administrative division present different results on influencing passenger and freight vehicle accidents. Based on these results, measures including driver education and road infrastructure improvement could be implemented to reduce the injury severity of accidents in passenger and freight vehicles.