Investigating factors affecting bus/minibus accident severity in a developing country for different subgroup datasets characterised by time, pavement, and light conditions

Authors

Reuben Tamakloe
Sungho Lim
Enoch F. Sam
Shin Hyoung Park
Dongjoo Park

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

2021

Subject Area

mode - bus, place - africa, planning - safety/accidents

Keywords

Random parameter, Accident severity, Developing country, Unobserved heterogeneity, Temporal stability, Infrastructure

Abstract

Developing countries are primarily associated with poor roadway and lighting infrastructure challenges, which has a considerable effect on their traffic accident fatality rates. These rates are further increased as bus/minibus drivers indulge in risky driving, mainly during weekends when traffic and police surveillance is low to maximise profits. Although these factors have been mentioned in the literature as key indicators influencing accident severity of buses/minibuses, there is currently no study that explored the complex mechanisms underpinning the simultaneous effect of pavement and light conditions on the generation of accident severity outcomes while considering weekly temporal stability of the accident-risk factors. This study seeks to investigate the variations in the effect of contributing factors on the severity of bus/minibus accidents in Ghana across various combinations of pavement and light conditions and to identify the exact effects of weekdays and weekends on severity outcomes using a random parameter ordered logit model with heterogeneity in the means to account for unobserved heterogeneity in the police-reported data. Preliminary analysis demonstrated that accident-risk factors used in the models were temporally unstable, warranting the division of the data into both weekend and weekday time-periods. A wide variety of factors such as sideswipes, median presence, merging, and overtaking had significantly varying effects on bus/minibus accident severities under different combinations of pavement and light conditions for both weekdays and weekends. Insights drawn from this study, together with the policy recommendations provided, can be employed by engineers and policymakers to improve traffic safety in developing nations.

Rights

Permission to publish the abstract has been given by Elsevier, copyright remains with them.

Comments

Accident Analysis and Prevention Home Page:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00014575

Recommended Citation

Tamakloe, R., Lim, S., Sam, E.F., Park, S.H., & Park, D. (2021). Investigating factors affecting bus/minibus accident severity in a developing country for different subgroup datasets characterised by time, pavement, and light conditions. Accident; analysis and prevention, Vol. 159, 106268.