Page 80 - tmp_Neat
P. 80

The remainder of this 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 5.3, and
               the last section provides the concluding remarks.



               5.2     Methods



               5.2.1  Data


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

               all police-reported collisions in Victoria, Australia. It included information on environmental,
               temporal, road user, roadway and vehicle characteristics. This study focuses on two-vehicle

               angle collisions involving at least one heavy vehicle. Heavy vehicles in this research include

               vehicles  in  several  categories  in  the  VicRoads  classification  scheme:  prime  mover  only,
               prime mover (single trailer), prime mover (B-double and B-triple), prime mover (number of

               trailers unknown), light commercial vehicle (rigid<= 4.5 tonnes), heavy vehicle (rigid > 4.5
               tonnes), and rigid truck (weight unknown). Note that buses and other types of heavy vehicles

               (machinery, farm equipment, etc.) were not included in this study.



               According  to  the  VicRoads  classification,  crash  injury  severity  is  classified  into  four
               categories: fatal injury (killed or died within 30 days; serious injury (sent to hospital, possibly

               admitted); other injury (typically requires medical treatment); and non-injury. From 2006 to

               2016, 3675 people were involved in two-vehicle angle collisions involving at least one heavy
               vehicle in Victoria, Australia. Of the 3675 persons involved, 107 (2.9%) were fatally injured,

               759 (20.7%) were seriously injured, 1085 (29.5%) had minor injuries, and 1724 (46.9%) had
               no injury. In this study, fatal and serious injuries were combined into a severe injury category

               because of the very small number of fatal injuries. In addition, other injury and non-injury
               were  combined  into  a  minor  injury  category  because  of  their  substantially  lower  average

               social cost. In the final sample, severe injury comprised 23.6% and minor injury comprised

               76.4%.


               In addition to the crash data from VicRoads, information on traffic volume and road features

               (e.g.  road  division  marking)  were  extracted  from  the  Australian  Urban  Research
               Infrastructure  Network  (AURIN).  The  variables  used  in  estimating  the  final  model  are
                                                           63
   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85