Contributing factors and severity of serious single-passenger vehicle collisions in Beijing

ABSTRACT Single-vehicle collision is a typical traffic collision, which usually causes heavy casualties and property losses. This study uses crash data during the last five years to obtain the characteristics of injury severity and contributing factors, and further provides some important insights for crash prevention and vehicle safety. Based on the investigation and in-depth data analysis of traffic collisions, 100 serious single-passenger vehicle collisions in Beijing, China, from 2009 to 2013 are collected. Main characteristics of occupant, vehicle, fixed objects, road, environment and their correlations with severity are analysed, respectively. The results demonstrate that time of occurrence, type of date, number of occupants and speed of vehicles are the significant factors related to the severity. And for the total crashes, chi-square test reveals that night time travelling, common weekday, single occupant in vehicle and over 80 km/h vehicle speed are significant related to nonfatal/fatal crashes. A logic regression model shows that driving solo and impacting trees increased the crash severity. Further, this paper discusses the main causation and related safety countermeasures on the serious single-vehicle collisions.