Investigating factors influencing injury severity in crashes involving vulnerable road users in Pakistan

Road traffic crashes claim around 1.19 million lives annually worldwide, with over half of the fatalities involving vulnerable road users (VRUs). While several studies have explored the risk factors associated with specific categories of VRUs in Pakistan, research focusing on VRUs collectively, considering all categories and their unique safety challenges, remains limited. This study aims to examine the influence of various risk factors on the severity of injuries resulting from crashes involving VRUs, using a three-year dataset (2021-2023). The study evaluated the effectiveness of six boosting-based ensemble machine learning classifiers across multiple evaluation metrics. The findings indicated that boosting with decision stumps outperformed extreme gradient boosting, light gradient boosting, histogram-based gradient boosting, categorical boosting, and adaptive boosting in terms of recall, F₁-score, and accuracy. The partial dependence plots demonstrated that VRUs aged 55 years or older, collisions with other VRU groups, involvement of vans and heavy vehicles, rainy weather, the COVID-19 period, and the existence of painted medians increase the likelihood of severe injury in crashes involving VRUs. The pairwise SHAP interaction plot also supported these findings by illustrating that the interaction between different vehicle types (vans and heavy vehicles), adverse weather conditions, and VRU crashes during the COVID-19 lockdown period elevates the risk of severe crashes. Based on the study findings, several policy recommendations were proposed, including implementing education and awareness programs, developing strategies to manage mixed traffic, and improving road infrastructure to enhance safety for all VRU groups.