Highlights This study investigates the near-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on crash size and severity among older drivers. The analysis was conducted using Exploratory Factor Analysis, Confirmatory Factor Analysis, and Structural Equation Modeling technique. The findings reveal that “Driving maneuver & crash location”, “Road features and traffic control devices” were the main risk factors. Four latent factors as well as “Pandemic” variable contributed equally in predicting crash size and severity. Traffic rule violation, crash time, and traffic control devices were found to be new risk factors among senior drivers.

    Abstract Recent research revealed that COVID-19 pandemic was associated with noticeable changes in travel demand, traffic volumes, and traffic safety measures. Despite the reduction of traffic volumes across the US, several recent studies indicated that crash rates increased across different states during COVID-19 pandemic. Although some recent studies have focused on examining the changes in traffic conditions and crash rates before and during the pandemic, not enough research has been conducted to identify risk factors to crash severity. Even the limited research addressing the contributing factors to crash severity were focused on the pool category of drivers and no insight is available regarding older drivers, one of the most vulnerable groups to traffic collision and coronavirus. Moreover, these studies investigated the early impact of the COVID-19 pandemic mostly using up to three months of data. However, near-term and long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are still unknown on traffic collisions. Therefore, this study aims to contribute to the literature by studying the near-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on crash size and severity among older drivers. To this end, a relatively large sample of crash data with senior drivers at fault was obtained and analyzed. To identify the main contributing factors affecting crash outcomes, Exploratory Factor Analysis was conducted on a high-dimension data set to identify potential latent factors which were validated through Confirmatory Factor Analysis. After that, Structural Equation Modeling technique was performed to examine the associations among the identified independent latent factors and the dependent variable. Additionally, SEM model identified the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on seniors’ crash severity. The findings reveal that several latent variables were the significant predictors of crash severity of older drivers including “Driving maneuver & crash location”, “Road features and traffic control devices”, “Driver condition & behavior”, “Road geometric characteristics”, “Crash time and lighting”, and “Road class” latent factors. The binary variable of “Pandemic” was found to be as highly significant as the last four latent factors mentioned above. This means not only were older drivers more likely to be involved in higher crash size with higher severity level during the pandemic period, but also “Pandemic” was a risk factor to seniors as much as “Driver condition & behavior”, “Road geometric characteristics”, “Crash time & lighting”, and “Road class” factors. The results of this study provide useful insights that may improve road safety among senior drivers during pandemic periods like COVID-19.


    Zugriff

    Zugriff prüfen

    Verfügbarkeit in meiner Bibliothek prüfen

    Bestellung bei Subito €


    Exportieren, teilen und zitieren



    Titel :

    Near-term impact of COVID-19 pandemic on seniors’ crash size and severity


    Beteiligte:
    Doulabi, Saba (Autor:in) / Hassan, Hany M. (Autor:in)


    Erscheinungsdatum :

    2023-03-14




    Medientyp :

    Aufsatz (Zeitschrift)


    Format :

    Elektronische Ressource


    Sprache :

    Englisch




    Urban Road Safety and Crash Severity during the 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic: The Case of Seattle, WA

    Haifeng (Felix) Liao / Michael Lowry | DOAJ | 2021

    Freier Zugriff

    Impact of pavement conditions on crash severity

    Li, Yingfeng / Liu, Chunxiao / Ding, Liang | Elsevier | 2013


    Impact of pavement conditions on crash severity

    Li, Yingfeng | Online Contents | 2013


    Crash severity sensing

    Stuetzler, F.-J. / Meissner, P. | British Library Conference Proceedings | 1998