Severity of Injuries to Motor Vehicle Drivers at Highway-Rail Grade Crossings in the United States

There are approximately 240,000 highway rail grade crossings in the United States. High crash frequencies at these locations have led to continued research in safety modeling. Existing crash models for highway rail grade crossings can be classified into two categories: models for predicting accident frequency and models of the severity of driver injuries. The majority of these studies have focused on the first category. Few studies have focused on the severity of injuries to motor vehicle drivers at highway rail grade crossings. The objective of this study was to determine the contributing factors that influence the severity of driver injuries in accidents at highway rail grade crossings. Probit models showed that the following factors were significant: whether the crash occurred during the peak hour, weather, visibility, vehicle type, vehicle speed, annual average daily traffic, train speed, driver age and gender, area type, and type of highway pavement. A marginal effects analysis was also conducted to quantitatively interpret the marginal effects of the contributing factors on each severity level for the highway driver.