Associating Crash Avoidance Maneuvers with Driver Attributes and Accident Characteristics: A Mixed Logit Model Approach

This study focuses on the propensity of drivers to engage in crash avoidance maneuvers in relation to driver attributes, critical events, crash characteristics, vehicles involved, road characteristics and environmental attributes. Five alternative actions involving emergency lateral and speed control maneuvers are considered: “no avoidance maneuvers”, “braking”, “steering”, “braking & steering”, and “other maneuvers”. The importance of avoidance maneuvers derives from the key role of responsible, proactive and state-aware road users within the concept of sustainable safety systems, as well as from the key role of the ability of drivers to perform effective corrective maneuvers for the success of automated in-vehicle warning and driver assistance systems. The analysis is conducted by means of a mixed logit model that accommodates correlations across alternatives and heteroscedasticity. Data for the analysis are retrieved from the General Estimates System (GES) crash database for the year 2009. Results show that (i) the nature of the critical event that made the crash imminent influences the choice of crash avoidance maneuvers, (ii) women and elderly have a lower propensity to conduct crash avoidance maneuvers, (iii) fatigue and distractions have a greater negative impact on the tendency to engage in crash avoidance maneuvers than alcohol consumption, (iv) difficult road conditions increase the propensity to perform crash avoidance maneuvers, (v) visual obstruction and artificial illumination have an adverse effect on the probability to carry on crash avoidance maneuvers, and (vi) the combination “braking & steering” is more closely related to “steering” than “braking”.