Modelling the Injury Severity of Heavy Vehicle Crashes in Australia

Road freight transport and heavy vehicles play a significant role in transporting commodities and merchandise goods in Australia. According to the predictions, heavy vehicle traffic in Australia will increase by 50 percent by 2030. The heavy vehicle traffic growth increases safety concerns since the probability of vehicle crashes increases by five percent when the heavy vehicle percentage is higher than 30 percent of the total traffic volume. Despite comprising a small proportion of total registered vehicles (roughly 3%), heavy vehicles are involved in 18% of total road fatalities. Therefore, the reduction in the number of crashes involving heavy vehicles is of high priority. The objective of this research is to identify the influencing factors on injury severity in heavy vehicle crashes using the multinomial logit model. A dataset, including 9175 heavy vehicle crashes in the Victoria State, Australia, over the period of 2006–2018 is used in this paper. The severity of truck crashes includes fatal/serious injury, minor injury, and property damage only, and various characteristics were examined as the potential risks factor, including the driver, crash, road, environment, and vehicle characteristics. Our results show that factors such as occupant variables (e.g. driver age and gender), collision characteristics (e.g. collisions with fixed objects and truck overturns), temporal characteristics (e.g. early morning, midnight), spatial characteristics (e.g. urban or rural areas), environmental factors (e.g. lights condition) increase the probability of fatal/serious injuries in heavy vehicle crashes. The result from the study can be applied to reduce the severity of heavy vehicle crashes.