Measurement Tools For Traffic Crash İnjury Severity İmproving Says Wayne State Study

Efforts to improve traffic safety have been aided by mathematical models that allow researchers to better assess those factors that impact the degree of injury suffered as a result of traffic crashes, a Wayne State University researcher says. Peter Savolainen, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering in WSU's College of Engineering, recently conducted a comprehensive state-of-the-practice review of research in that area addressing a variety of methodological issues that can complicate analysis of injury severity data. He believes substantial progress has been made and will continue in the gathering of information that will yield ever more precise knowledge about crash outcomes.

Reducing the severity level of injury resulting from a crash is one of two primary emphases of traffic safety research; reducing crash frequency is the other. A separate state-of-the-practice paper was published last year on crash frequency models; collectively, those works assist researchers charged with providing decision makers and transportation agencies with supportable conclusions that enable them to better allocate resources aimed at improving traffic safety.

"Ultimately we're trying to determine what the impacts of specific factors are on injury severity," Savolainen said. "With that information, we can then make informed decisions as to policies and programs aimed at reducing crash severity."

However, a variety of issues complicate researchers' ability to analyze those factors. One is simply the quality of the injury severity data, which generally is obtained from crash reports. That data tends to be most thorough with respect to the driver, for whom complete information is uniformly collected.

Crash data tends to be of lower quality and less complete for injured passengers, and particularly for uninjured passengers. Reports also can prove problematic, Savolainen said, when details are omitted about things like occupant age and gender, alcohol consumption or the use of safety equipment. Some research also has demonstrated a tendency for similar injuries to be reported as more severe for females than males.