01100692

Component

Under critical traffic situations leading to motor vehicle accidents, drivers can either “attempt” or “not attempt” to avoid crashes. This study investigates the drivers, vehicles, and environments’ characteristics associated with crash avoidance maneuvers (i.e. crash avoidance or no crash avoidance) to help develop countermeasures that would mitigate the number of drivers with no avoidance maneuvers. Rear-end collisions, head-on collisions, and angle collisions are analyzed separately using decision trees and the significance of the variables on the binary response variable (avoidance or no avoidance) is determined. Moreover, the random forests method, a novel technique in traffic safety studies, is employed to rank the importance of the drivers/vehicles/environments characteristics on crash avoidance maneuvers. According to the results, drivers’ visibility obstruction, drivers’ physical impairment, drivers’ distraction are associated with the crash avoidance maneuver in all three types of accidents. Moreover, speed limit is associated with rear-end collisions avoidance maneuvers, and vehicle type (i.e. Passenger cars and LTV versus trucks and large trucks) is correlated with head-on collisions and angle collisions avoidance maneuvers.

01084478

08-1520

English

22p

2008

Transportation Research Board 87th Annual Meeting

DVD

Figures (5) ; References (34) ; Tables (1)

Automobile drivers; Behavior; Crash avoidance systems; Crash causes; Decision trees; Distraction; Frontal crashes; Highway safety; Mathematical models; Random variables; Rear end crashes; Side crashes; Vehicles; Visibility

Highways; Safety and Human Factors; Vehicles and Equipment; I81: Accident Statistics; I83: Accidents and the Human Factor

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2008 Paper #08-1520

TRIS, TRB

Jan 29 2008 3:52PM