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significant safety concern for transport authorities and other organisations such as insurance

companies and health and emergency services.

Furthermore, Safe Work Australia (2012) indicates that the road freight transport sector
experiences about 20.5 deaths per 100,000 workers, which is eleven times higher than the

average of all industries. Single vehicle crashes resulted in the death of 338 truck drivers,
which consisted of 69% of all truck driver fatalities between 2003-04 and 2010-11 in

Australia. Therefore, traffic collisions involving heavy vehicles are a major workplace health

and safety concern for the freight industry and a significant concern for many other industries
that require this critical service in their supply chains.

Therefore, the National Road Safety Strategy 2011-2020 of Australia has targeted the
reduction in the number of crashes involving heavy vehicle as one of the key performance

indicators (Austroads, 2013). Moreover, the transport sector has been designated as a priority
area in the Science and Research Priorities by the Australian government (Science, 2017).

Therefore, research to identify the factors contributing to heavy vehicle crashes is needed to
provide evidence-based recommendations to improve the safety of heavy vehicles.

1.2 Research Objectives

The overall aim of this research is to identify the factors influencing heavy vehicle crashes
and injury severity in Victoria, Australia. To achieve this aim, the following objectives have

been established for this study:

1. To develop a model to determine the differences in the variables influencing single-
vehicle crashes involving heavy vehicles at intersections and mid-blocks.

2. To develop a crash injury severity model to predict the influence of neighbourhood
socioeconomic variables on injury severity in heavy-vehicle collisions.

3. To develop a crash injury severity model to determine the factors contributing to injury

severity in angle collisions involving heavy vehicles.

2