Abstract
The over-representation of young drivers in road crashes remains an important concern worldwide. Cluster analysis has been applied to young driver sub-groups, but its application by analysing crash occurrence is just emerging. We present a classification analysis that advances the field through a holistic overview of crash patterns useful for designing youth-targeted road safety programmes. We compiled a database of 8644 New Zealand crashes from 2002 to 2011 involving at least one 15–24-year-old driver and a fatal or serious injury for at least one road user. We considered crash location, infrastructure characteristics, environmental conditions, demographic characteristics, driving behaviour, and pre-crash manoeuvres. The analysis yielded 15 and 8 latent classes of, respectively, single-vehicle and multi-vehicle crashes, and average posterior probabilities measured the odds of correct classification that revealed how the identified clusters contain mostly crashes of a particular class and all the crashes of that class. The results raised three major safety concerns for young drivers that should be addressed: (1) reckless driving and traffic law violations; (2) inattention, error, and hazard perception problems; and (3) interaction with road geometry and lighting conditions, especially on high-speed open roads and state highways.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 427-443 |
Number of pages | 17 |
Journal | International Journal of Injury Control and Safety Promotion |
Volume | 23 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 1 Oct 2016 |
Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2015 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Keywords
- clustering analysis
- latent class analysis
- road crashes
- young driver problem