Investigating the effective factors in the severity of accidents of old drivers on suburban roads

Today, road accidents are one of the leading causes of death in the world. Therefore, identifying the contributories factors for the reduction in the number and severity of these type events is one of the main tasks of traffic engineers. Increasing the aging of the population in some countries and their drivers and thus increasing the number road accidents in old drivers are new problems in traffic safety engineering. In this study, the most important factors affecting the severity of suburban road accidents were identified by investigation the characteristics of accidents involving drivers over the age of 60 years. The data of the accidents related to the suburban roads of ILAM province (Western province of Iran) have been extracted from the police report. The logit model was used to predict the severity of these types of accidents. Parameters such as the time of the accident, the geometric design of the accident site, drivers’ education, the weather conditions, the characteristics of the vehicle and the type of violation were investigated. Results show, that drivers’ education, the geometric design and hour (12 midnight to 6 am) of occurrence accidents are main contributories factors to severity older drivers’ suburban road accidents.

Keywords:

older driver’s road accidents , logit model , suburban road , ILAM province