Investigating the injury severity of single-vehicle truck crashes in a developing country

Trucking plays a vital role in economic development in every country, especially countries where it serves as the backbone of the economy. The fast growth of economy in Iran as a developing country has also been accompanied by an alarming situation in terms of fatalities in truck-involved crashes, among the drivers and passengers of the trucks as well as the other vehicles involved. Despite the sizable efforts to investigate the truck-involved crashes, very little is known about the safety of truck movements in developing countries, and about the single-truck crashes worldwide. Thus, this study aims to uncover significant factors associated with injury severities sustained by truck drivers in single-vehicle truck crashes in Iran. The explanatory factors tested in the models include the characteristics of drivers, vehicles, and roadways. A random threshold random parameters hierarchical ordered probit model is utilized to consider heterogeneity across observations. Several variables turned out to be significant in the model, including driver's education, advanced braking system deployment, presence of curves on roadways, and high speed-limit. Using those results, we propose safety countermeasures in three categories of 1) educational, 2) technological, and 3) road engineering to mitigate the severity of single-vehicle truck crashes.