Keywords

Angle, rear-end, head-on, side swipe, crash, GES, FARS

Abstract

Each year about 400,000 trucks are involved in motor vehicle crashes. Crashes involving a car and truck have always been a major concern due to the heavy fatality rates. These types of crashes result in about 60 percent of all fatal truck crashes and two-thirds of all police-reportable truck crashes. Car-truck crashes need to be analyzed further to study the trends for a car-truck crash and develop some countermeasures to lower these crashes. Various types of car-truck crashes are analyzed in this study and the effects of various roadway/environment factors and variables related to driver characteristics in these car-truck crashes are investigated. To examine the crash characteristics and to investigate the significant factors related to a car-truck crash, this study analyzed five years of data (2000-2004) of the General estimates system of National Sampling System (GES) and the Fatality Analysis Reporting system database (FARS). All two vehicle crashes including either a car or truck (truck-truck cases excluded because of their low percentage composition) were obtained from these databases. Based on the five year data (GES/FARS) the percentage of car-truck angle collisions constituted the highest percent of frequency of all types of car-truck collisions. Furthermore, based on the 2004 GES data there is a clear trend that the frequency of angle collision increases with the increase in driver injury severity. When analyzing the GES data it was observed that the percentage of angle collisions was the highest followed by the rear end and sideswipe (same direction) collisions respectively. When the fatalities were considered (FARS database used), the percentage of angle collisions was the highest followed by head-on and rear-end collisions. The nominal multinomial logit model and logistic regression models were utilized for this analysis. Divided section, alcohol involvement, adverse weather conditions, dark lighting condition and old age of drivers had a significant effect on the car-truck crashes and were likely to increase the likelihood of a car-truck crash. Whereas dark but light conditions, young aged drivers showed a less likelihood of involving in a car-truck crash. This research is significant in providing an insight into various car-truck crash types and provides with results, which have impacted the car-truck crashes. A better understanding of the factors impacting these crashes will help in providing better countermeasures, which would result in reducing the car-truck crashes.

Notes

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Graduation Date

2006

Semester

Fall

Advisor

Radwan, Essam A.

Degree

Master of Science (M.S.)

College

College of Engineering and Computer Science

Department

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Degree Program

Civil Engineering

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0001390

URL

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0001390

Language

English

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Masters Thesis (Open Access)

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