Factors influencing accident severity: An analysis by road accident type

Nowadays, road safety is an issue particularly relevant because of the increasing occurrence of road accidents. For this reason, it is very important to analyze accident severity and the factors influencing it. This paper aims to investigate on the characteristics that can influence the severity of an accident by distinguishing between the various types of accident (e.g. front/side collision, rear-end collision). The included related factors were grouped in different categories referring to road, external environment, and driver. The proposed analysis has the specific objective to discover the possible differences between accidents severity expressed through information such as the number of dead or injured persons in terms of factors influencing the various crash types. The method proposed to this aim is the logistic regression, which is able to determine the weight of each factor involved in the analysis on accident severity. The emerging results suggest that there are interesting differences between accidents type. The findings show that logistic regression as used in this research is a capable tool in providing significant interpretations that can be used for future safety improvements in Italy.