Page 47 - tmp_Neat

social, economic and demographic characteristics of neighbourhoods where road users live

(Warsh et al., 2009; Cottrill and Thakuriah, 2010; Schneider et al., 2010).

The socioeconomic status (SES) of a person is one of the most fundamental determinants of
his or her health outcomes. The importance of social, physical, economic and environmental

factors in determining health outcomes has been identified in many studies (National Health
Committee, 1988; Carroll et al., 1993; Link and Phelan, 1995). The social influences

examined include a range of inter-related factors, such as education, employment, occupation

and working conditions, income, and housing. However, the influence of SES on health
outcomes of traffic accidents has been examined in only a few studies and only a limited

number of factors have been explored.

Therefore, the objective of this research is to identify factors contributing to the severity of

crashes involving heavy vehicles. In addition to the usual contributing factors, such as
roadway, environment, road user and vehicle factors, this study examines the influence of

social and demographic characteristics of the neighbourhood where road users live and where
crashes occur in the State of Victoria, Australia, using the multinomial logit model. This

study will contribute to advancing knowledge in the field, as little research has been done on

the contribution of the socio-demographic characteristics of the neighbourhoods where road
users live and where crashes occur.

The remaining chapter is organised as follows. In the next section, the data used in this

research and the estimation model are presented. The results are discussed in Section 4.3, and
the last section provides some concluding remarks.

4.2 Methods

4.2.1 Data

The primary data used in this study were provided by VicRoads and contained information

on all police-reported collisions in Victoria, Australia. The data provided included
information on environmental, temporal, road user, road, and vehicle characteristics. In

36