Pedestrian-injury severity analysis in pedestrian-vehicle crashes with familiar and unfamiliar drivers

Pedestrian injury in pedestrian-vehicle crash is significantly related to the driver, pedestrian, vehicle, crash and environment characteristics. Driver's route familiarity has been found greatly associated with driving behaviours. Two-year pedestrian-vehicle crash data in Yunnan Province were studied to investigate the factors that affect pedestrian-injury severities in crashes with familiar and unfamiliar drivers by employing mixed logit models. Eight variables were found significant only in the familiar driver model. And six variables were found significant only in the unfamiliar driver model. Estimation findings indicate that the factors of early morning and sunny weather condition will be better modelled as random parameters in the model for familiar drivers and the same with the factors of rainy weather condition and afternoon peak in the model for unfamiliar drivers. Some more effective and targeted countermeasures are put forward for familiar drivers, unfamiliar drivers and transportation managers to reduce pedestrians' injury severities.