PMID- 31233995
OWN - NLM
STAT- MEDLINE
DCOM- 20191011
LR  - 20191011
IS  - 1879-2057 (Electronic)
IS  - 0001-4575 (Linking)
VI  - 131
DP  - 2019 Oct
TI  - Examining correlations between motorcyclist's conspicuity, apparel related 
      factors and injury severity score: Evidence from new motorcycle crash causation 
      study.
PG  - 45-62
LID - S0001-4575(18)30488-3 [pii]
LID - 10.1016/j.aap.2019.04.009 [doi]
AB  - Motorcyclists are vulnerable road users at a particularly high risk of serious 
      injury or death when involved in a crash. In order to evaluate key risk factors 
      in motorcycle crashes, this study quantifies how different "policy-sensitive" 
      factors correlate with injury severity, while controlling for rider and crash 
      specific factors as well as other observed/unobserved factors. The study analyzes 
      data from 321 motorcycle injury crashes from a comprehensive US DOT FHWA's 
      Motorcycle Crash Causation Study (MCCS). These were all non-fatal injury crashes 
      that are representative of the vast majority (82%) of motorcycle crashes. An 
      anatomical injury severity scoring system, termed as Injury Severity Score (ISS), 
      is analyzed providing an overall score by accounting for the possibility of 
      multiple injuries to different body parts of a rider. An ISS ranges from 1 to 75, 
      averaging at 10.32 for this sample (above 9 is considered serious injury), with a 
      spike at 1 (very minor injury). Preliminary cross-tabulation analysis mapped ISS 
      to the Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) injury classification and examined the 
      strength of associations between the two. While the study finds a strong 
      correlation between AIS and ISS classification (Kendall's tau of 0.911), 
      significant contrasts are observed in that, when compared to ISS, AIS tends to 
      underestimate the severity of an injury sustained by a rider. For modeling, fixed 
      and random parameter Tobit modeling frameworks were used in a corner-solution 
      setting to account for the left-tail spike in the distribution of ISS and to 
      account for unobserved heterogeneity. The developed random parameters Tobit 
      framework additionally accounts for the interactive effects of key risk factors, 
      allowing for possible correlations among random parameters. A correlated random 
      parameter Tobit model significantly out-performed the uncorrelated random 
      parameter Tobit and fixed parameter Tobit models. While controlling for various 
      other factors, we found that motorcycle-specific shoes and retroreflective upper 
      body clothing correlate with lower ISS on-average by 5.94 and 1.88 units 
      respectively. Riders with only partial helmet coverage on-average sustained more 
      severe injuries, whereas, riders with acceptable helmet fit had lower ISS 
      Methodologically, not only do the individual effects of several key risk factors 
      vary significantly across observations in the form of random parameters, but the 
      interactions between unobserved factors characterizing random parameters 
      significantly influence the injury severity score as well. The implications of 
      the findings are discussed.
CI  - Copyright (c) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
FAU - Wali, Behram
AU  - Wali B
AD  - Urban Design 4 Health, Inc., USA. Electronic address: bwali@ud4h.com.
FAU - Khattak, Asad J
AU  - Khattak AJ
AD  - University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996, USA. Electronic address: 
      akhattak@utk.edu.
FAU - Ahmad, Numan
AU  - Ahmad N
AD  - Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, The University of Tennessee, 
      USA. Electronic address: nahmad1@vols.utk.edu.
LA  - eng
PT  - Journal Article
DEP - 20190621
PL  - England
TA  - Accid Anal Prev
JT  - Accident; analysis and prevention
JID - 1254476
SB  - IM
MH  - Abbreviated Injury Scale
MH  - Accidents, Traffic/*statistics & numerical data
MH  - Head Protective Devices/*statistics & numerical data
MH  - Humans
MH  - Models, Statistical
MH  - Motorcycles/*statistics & numerical data
MH  - Protective Clothing/*statistics & numerical data
MH  - Risk Factors
MH  - Wounds and Injuries/*epidemiology
OTO - NOTNLM
OT  - Conspicuity and apparel
OT  - Correlated and uncorrelated random parameters
OT  - Injury severity score
OT  - Motorcycle crash causation
OT  - Tobit model
EDAT- 2019/06/25 06:00
MHDA- 2019/10/12 06:00
CRDT- 2019/06/25 06:00
PHST- 2018/08/16 00:00 [received]
PHST- 2019/04/04 00:00 [revised]
PHST- 2019/04/15 00:00 [accepted]
PHST- 2019/06/25 06:00 [pubmed]
PHST- 2019/10/12 06:00 [medline]
PHST- 2019/06/25 06:00 [entrez]
AID - S0001-4575(18)30488-3 [pii]
AID - 10.1016/j.aap.2019.04.009 [doi]
PST - ppublish
SO  - Accid Anal Prev. 2019 Oct;131:45-62. doi: 10.1016/j.aap.2019.04.009. Epub 2019 
      Jun 21.