Effects of Weather and Traffic Conditions on Truck Accident Severity on Freeways

Understanding the characteristics of truck-involved crashes is of keen interest because such crashes are highly associated with greater potential leading to severer injury. The purpose of this study is to identify factors affecting injury severity of truck-involved crashes on freeways. In addition, a binary logistic regression technique is applied to identify causal factors affecting truck crash severity under normal and adverse weather conditions. Major findings from the analyses are discussed with truck operations strategies including speed enforcement, variable speed limit, and truck lane restriction, from the safety enhancement point of view. The results of this study would be useful for developing traffic control and operations strategies to reduce truck-involved crashes and injury severity in practice.

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